DG 

NORTHERN FRANCE 

' T 

DAVIS 



ANDBOOK OF 



A Handbook of Northern France 



by 



William Morris Davis, S.D., Ph.D. 

Professor of Geology, Emeritus, Harvard University 

Professeur agree a rUniversite de Paris, 1911-12 

Chairman, Geography Committee, National Research Council 




Cambridge 

Harvard University Press 

1918 



(U-Lm ^ 



5- 



COPYRIGHT, 1918 
HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS 



^--ir^ <f ^.-"^ 









: ^ PREFACE 

o 



"^-^ BY COL. PAUL AZAN 



IF I were asked to draw up a list of the things that an 
American soldier, embarking for France, ought to 
carry with him, I should put at the head of it this little 
book, not only because the reading of it will be a pleas- 
ant distraction on the ocean voyage and in the trenches, 
but because a knowledge of its contents is indispensable. 

The American soldier will certainly wish to know 
something of the region in which he is called to serve, to 
suffer, and perhaps to die. His friends also will desire 
to inform themselves about it. They will find in this 
Handbook a concise account of northeastern France, 
the equivalent of which can be learned elsewhere only 
by consulting a number of general works and special 
articles. 

No one can be better qualified than Professor Davis 
to write such a book. His lectures on France, as a part 
of his course on Europe given at Harvard University 
from 1885 to 1912, have been based not only on a study 
of the best European sources, but on many journeys 
abroad, during which France has been repeatedly 
visited. Leading French geographers have honored 
him with corresponding membership in the Geographi- 
cal Society of Paris, and in the Academy of Sciences. 



iv PREFACE 

If they had had to designate an American author for 
this Handbook, their choice would certainly have fallen 
on Professor Davis. His work in preparing the book is 
a service for which the United States and France should 
be equally grateful to him. 

Paul Azan, 

Lt.-Colonel, chef de la mission 
Cambridge, August, 1917. militaire franqaise 



PREFACE 

BY THE AUTHOR 

THIS Handbook has been written with the approval 
of the Geography Committee, National Research 
Council, for those officers of our National Army who 
may wish to learn something of the leading physical 
features of the brave country where their aid will be so 
welcome. If the chapters are read over and the geo- 
graphical names are identified on the accompanying 
maps, the uplands and valleys, rivers and cities, which 
may otherwise float vaguely ^'somewhere in France," 
will take proper position with respect to each other. 
News from the front and beyond and from the country 
that supports the front will thus become more definite 
and intelligible. 

Much fuller information on French geography can be 
obtained from Commandant Barre's ^^ La Geographie 
Mihtaire '' (Paris, 1899), and more especially from his 
larger work, '' L' Architecture du Sol de la France '^ 
(Paris, 1903). The historical aspects of the subject are 
admirably treated in the " Tableau de la Geographie de 
la France " (Paris, 1911), written by Professor Vidal de 
la Blache, the leading geographer of his country, as the 
first volume of the ^' Histoire de France " by Lavisse. 
For limited districts, reference should be made to 



vi PREFACE 

Auerbach^s "Plateau lorrain " (1893), Demangeon's 
" Picardie'^ (1905), and Blanchard^s "Flandre^^ (1906); 
but modern works such as these are unfortunately not 
available for all parts of France. 

The geographical features of northeastern France and 
the adjacent regions are by no means so simple as those 
of an equal area of our prairie states. The dominant 
features — the " upland belts " — of the part of France 
here described are of a kind that is not common in the 
United States and hence not familiar to most Americans. 
They are of vital importance in warfare, as is shown in 
Johnson's recent and valuable book, " Topography and 
Strategy in the War.'' If our officers wish to know 
these features as well as they are known by the officers 
of the German army, they should study not only the 
condensed descriptions of such a Handbook as this, but 
all other available sources of information, particularly 
the large-scale maps that are accessible in France. 

When the uplands and valleys of the country are 
known, it is a comparatively easy matter to locate the 
cities, villages, forests, railways, and roads of any dis- 
trict with respect to the relief of the surface; and when 
all these facts are learned, military movements may be 
planned with respect to them. It has not been possible, 
however, to indicate the roads and railways on the small 
outline maps which are here introduced as a means of 
locating the larger features of the region; and in order 
that the text shall not exceed a moderate number of 
pages, space has been allowed only for brief descriptions 
of a few of the most important lines of transportation. 



PREFACE vii 

Detailed information on these matters must be sought 
from special sources. 

The descriptions here presented have been prepared 
with constant reference to the large-scale maps of the 
French " Etat-major " from which certain small rec- 
tangles are reproduced on a scale of 1:100,000. The 
generalized bird's-eye views sketched from these and 
other maps, will, it is hoped, assist the reader in visualiz- 
ing the districts thus represented; the views are seen to 
best effect if the book is laid flat and looked at obliquely. 
It should be understood that these sketches omit a 
multitude of small features. Large-scale maps should 
always be consulted for details. 

Certain sections of the introductory chapter as well 
as the whole of the final chapter have been revised by 
some of my colleagues, to whom I am much indebted. 
The interest in the book shown by the Officers of the 
French Army at Harvard has been a great encourage- 
ment; and for the prefatory page by Colonel Paul Azan 
I am under special obligations. To a number of friends 
who have contributed to the fund by which the publi- 
cation of a first edition of the Handbook for free dis- 
tribution to army officers has been made possible, my 
sincere thanks are given. 

Many pleasant journeys have been recalled while 
writing these pages: early visits to France in 1868, 
1873, and 1878; a bicycle tour across northern France 
in 1894; personal excursions in 1899, 1900, 1903, and 
1905; and university excursions in 1908, 1911, and 1912. 
Now, at an age when travel is no longer so easy as it was 



viii PREFACE 

once, the author can return only in imagination but 
always with deep sympathy to the fair landscapes, long 
familiar, so many of which have been laid waste. May 
the readers of the book come to share with the writer a 
warm affection for the scenes here described. 

W. M. D. 

Harvard University, 

Cambridge, Mass., 

February, 1918. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Preface by Col. Paul Azan iii 

Preface by the Author v 

CHAPTER I 
A General Account of France 3 

France and its Central Highlands — Boundaries — The 
northeastern frontier — Rivers and cities — Rivers of the 
northeastern frontier — The climate of France — Goverh- 
ment — PubHc works: Roads; Canals; Railroads; Forests; 
Harbors; Topographic maps — Money — Weights and 
Measures. 

CHAPTER II 

The Geographical Features of Northern France ... 22 

The Paris basin — The bordering uplands and highlands — 

The four saddles — Products of the highlands and the basin. 

CHAPTER III 

The Region around Paris 27 

The three sectors centering at Paris — The southern sector 
— • The eastern sector — The rocks and the soils of the east- 
ern sector — The northern sector — The western salients of 
the northern sector — Paris and its neighborhood. 

CHAPTER IV 

The Eastern Half of the Paris Basin 43 

The belted relief of northeastern France — The upland 
belts as natural defences — Varied features of different up- 
land belts. 



X CONTENTS 

CHAPTER V 

The Vosges and the Adjoining Regions 52 

The Highlands of the Vosges — Alsace — The uplands west 
of the Vosges — The saddle of Langres southwest of the 
Vosges — The sixth upland belt. 

CHAPTER VI 

From the Plateau of Langres to Lorraine 65 

The fifth upland belt; southern part — The fifth upland 
belt; middle part — The elbow of the Moselle — The fifth 
upland belt; northern part — The frontier on the fifth up- 
land belt — The Woevre lowland — The fifth and the sixth 
upland belts; northernmost parts. 

CHAPTER VII 

The Region of the Meuse 84 

The fourth upland belt; southern part — The fourth up- 
land belt; northern part — The underfit Meuse — St. Mi- 
hiel and Verdun — The fourth upland belt; northernmost 
part. 

CHAPTER VIII 

Argonne and Champagne 98 

The third upland belt; its southern lowland substitute — 
The forest of Argonne — The second upland belt; southern 
part; the forest of Othe — The second upland belt and 
the Champagne — The dry Champagne from the Seine to the 
Aisne — The lowlands from the Aisne to the Oise. 

CHAPTER IX 

The First Upland Belt 110 

The scarp of the upland facing the Champagne lowland — 
The battle of the Marne — The tablelands north of the Aisne 
— Contrasts of upland belts and tablelands — The Aisne 
front. 



CONTENTS xi 

CHAPTER X 

The Region between the Upper Oise and the Somme . 124 
General features of the region — Rivers and cities — The 
war front from the Oise to the Scarpe. 

CHAPTER XI 

The Northwestern Uplands 133 

The chalk country of Picardy and Normandy — Villages and 
roads — Valley of the Seine — Exceptional features — The 
clift coast along the Channel — The bight of the Somme — 
Lack of natural harbors. 

CHAPTER XII 

The Lowlands of Northernmost France and Western 

Belgium 144 

The lowland, the maritime plain, and the dunes of Flanders 
— The lowland — The maritime plain — The dune-bordered 
coast — The people of Flanders — The war front in Flanders. 

CHAPTER XIII 

Regions North and Northeast of France 151 

The Ardennes and beyond — The gorge of the Meuse — The 
Uplands of Central Belgium — The Lorraine plateau and 
the adjacent districts of Germany — Southern part of the 
plateau — Northern part of the plateau — The Sarre coal 
field — The Hunsriick — The Luxembourg embayment — 
The gorge of the Moselle — The gorge of the Rhine. 



Index of Place Names 171 



A HANDBOOK OF NORTHERN FRANCE 



CHAPTER I 

A GENERAL ACCOUNT OF FRANCE 

1. France and its Central Highlands. The parts of western 
Europe which through the course of centuries have been 
welded together to form the country we now know as France, 
the home of a brave people of an intense national spirit, may 




Fig. 1. France and the United States 

be described as an irregular rectangle, measuring 700 kilo- 
meters north and south by 600 kilometers east and west. 
If superposed on North America in proper latitude it would 
lie mostly in the northern United States. Its area (including 
the island of Corsica, 8747 sq. k.) is 536,400 sq. k. or 207,170 
sq. miles, somewhat more than that of Indiana, Illinois, Wis- 
consin, and Iowa combined, or about midway between the 
areas of CaUfornia and Texas. Its population has increased 



4 GENERAL ACCOUNT 

slowly from 37,386,313 in 1861 to 39,601,509 in 1911, and 
thus equals eight-ninths of that of the United Kingdom of 
Great Britain and Ireland, two-thirds of that of the German 
Empire, four-fifths of that of Austria-Hungary, and two-fifths 
of that of the United States. 

The greater part of France consists of lowlands and moder- 
ately elevated uplands. Lofty mountains are found only in 
the Alps which form the southeastern, and in the Pyrenees 
which form the southwestern frontier. Between the northern 
lowlands and uplands and the lowlands of the south a grad- 
ual southeastward ascent leads to the Central Highlands 
or Massif central, flooded in certain districts with ancient 
lava flows and crowned with many extinct and more or less 
dissected volcanoes, of which the chief are Mt. Dore, 1886 
meters, and the Cantal, 1858 meters. The Highlands reach 
their greatest altitude, 1200 to 1400 meters with summits up 
to 1700 meters, at the southeastern border, and there fall off 
rapidly to the east, southeast, and south; the high and deeply 
dissected southeastern slope is of mountainous aspect 
when seen from the adjoining lower lands, and is known as 
the Cevennes. 

The bold slope of the Central Highlands to the southeast has 
exercised a marked influence on the history of France. When the 
Romans extended their Empire westward along the coast of the 
Mediterranean, they founded a province in the open country that is 
traversed by the south-flowing Rhone between the Alps on the east 
and the Cevennes on the west: this district is still called Pro- 
vence and its language is not French but Provengal. The stream of 
invasion farther into Gaul was divided into two currents by the 
Cevennes : a smaller current flowed westward between the Central 
Highlands and the Pyrenees to the low plains of the southwest, now 
known as Gascony; a larger current flowed northward through the 
open valley of the Rhone to its continuation in the plain of the Saone, 
and thence northwestward over a saddle of higher ground to the 



ORIGIN OF THE FRENCH LANGUAGE 5 

extensive area of northern uplands and lowlands, now known as the 
Paris basin. 

Some of the conquering invaders became colonists. The native 
Gauls gradually gave up their own Celtic language and adopted the 
Latin of their more civilized conquerors; but as their adopted 
speech had certain local pecuharities, the Romans called it lingua 
gallica. Although the smaller southern and larger northern areas 
of the region were confluent across a western lowland, they were 
elsewhere separated by the Central Highlands: hence, following a 
universal rule, the people of each area came to have certain ways of 
speech of their own. For example, in the south the habit was 
developed of using the Latin word, " hoc," pronounced oc, for 
" yes "; hence the southern language or Provengal came to be called 
Langue d'oc, and the southern district, Languedoc. In northern 
France, on the other hand, the affirmative was formed from the 
Latin words, " hoc ille," which in time came to be pronounced oil, 
and was later reduced to the modern form oui; thus the speech of 
the northern region might be called Langue d'oui. It is chiefly the 
Central Highlands that are responsible for this linguistic division. 

About the fifth century the Franks, a Teutonic tribe, overran the 
northern part of the country, subdued the inhabitants and adopted 
their language, which being thus further modified from the original 
Latin was called after the invaders, lingua francisca.. As the north- 
ern region was much the larger of the two, it gathered the greater 
population, and the people of the south were in time dominated 
by their relatives on the north. There on a middle meridian, a 
quarter way from the northern to the southern hmit of the country, 
Paris grew to be a great city, and the language of the north came to be 
the standard for the nation. Thus France today, peopled chiefly by 
the descendants of the original Gauls, of the Romans from the south, 
and of the Franks from the north — with the addition of a Norman 
stock in Normandy, and of Britons in Brittany — has taken its 
forms of speech from the southern invaders, but the name of the 
country and the name of its people and of its standard language 
come from the northern invaders. 

It is curious to note that while the people of the country that thus 
gained the name of France call themselves and their language by the 
Latinized adjective, frangais, we follow the Franks in the Teutonic 



6 GENERAL ACCOUNT 

habit of changing the vowel in the substantive when making its 
adjective, and therefore the Enghsh name for the people and the 
language of France is French. 

2. Boundaries. The boundaries of France may be de- 
scribed in terms of their local departures from a rectangular 




SPAIN 



Fig. 2. France and the Adjoining Countries 

frame measuring 600 by 700 k. as here shown. The north- 
ern boundary is bent outward 170 k. at the middle, so as to 
form a northern salient, close to the angle of which lies the 
city of Dunkirk on the coast of the North Sea. An irregular 
line trending southeast from the angle forms the boundary 
with Belgium across the low plains of the district known as 



BOUNDARIES 7 

Flanders and along the southern slope of the gradually as- 
cending highland of the Ardennes to the German frontier, 
described below. The southwestern line, following the low 
shore of Flanders for a short distance, soon reaches the clift 
coast of an area of uplands, and this is followed along the 
somewhat sinuous shore line of the arm of the sea which we 
call the English Channel, but which the French know as la 
Manche (the Sleeve). 

The first salient of the sinuous shore line advances to Cape 
Gris Nez, and there reduces the Channel to its least width, 
only 33 k. across: it was hereabouts that Caesar, b.c. 55, 
made his first crossing into Britain, quod inde erat hrevis- 
simus in Britanniam trajedus. In fine weather the chalk 
cliffs on the farther side of the Channel may be descried as 
a whitish band along the horizon ; and it is held by some that 
for this reason England, as viewed from the Continent, has 
gained the name of Albion. The harbor cities of Calais and 
Boulogne-sur-Mer, northeast and south of Cape Gris Nez, 
derive their chief importance from the international ferry 
traffic, day and night, across the Channel to Dover and Folke- 
stone; thus the narrowed Channel here gains its English 
name of Straits of Dover, and its French name of Pas de 
Calais, The western and southern boundaries are sufficiently 
shown on the outline map on page 6. 

On the east, the crest of the southwestern Alps, trending irregu- 
larly north-south, west of which the mountains extend over 100 k. 
toward the Rhone, forms the boundary with Italy, somewhat ex- 
terior to the southern third of the eastern side of the rectangle; 
the greatest excess is in the south near the coast. Mt. Blanc 
(4810 m.), the highest summit of the Alps, lies on the northern 
part of this line, beyond which French and Smss territory interlock 
in such manner that the former occupies most of the southern side 
of Lake Geneva, while the city of Geneva is included near the end 



8 GENERAL ACCOUNT 

of a southwestern lobe of Switzerland that, obhquely Hmited by the 
northeast-southwest Jura highlands, sharply indents the eastern 
side of France. 

3. The Northeastern Frontier. The northeastern boundary 
remains to be described. Beyond the other land frontiers of 
France, the near-by people of the adjoining nations, Spain, 
Italy, Switzerland, and Belgium, have many racial ties with 
the French; they speak languages of the same Romance 
family, and most of them (except in Switzerland), like most of 
the French, profess the Catholic religion. But beyond the 
northeastern frontier lies Germany, occupied by people of an- 
other stock, who speak an altogether different language and of 
whom the dominant members are Protestants. This frontier 
has for centuries been a battle ground. 

Between the Jura and the Vosges, the boundary runs north- 
ward across a narrow depression, the passage of Belfort, 
whence the southwestward drainage runs by the Doubs and 
the Saone through the mid-eastern lowland of France to the 
south-flowing Rhone; while the northeastward drainage runs 
by the 111 to a similar lowland in western Germany, north- 
ward through which flows the Rhine. It is from here north- 
and northwestward that the frontier was set back from its 
former position after the Franco-Prussian war of 1870. Be- 
yond the low passage of Belfort the boundary now follows 
the north-south crest of a short mountain range, known 
as the Vosges (German, Vogesen), for nearly 100 k., and 
thus the province of Alsace, extending into the lowland of the 
middle Rhine east of the Vosges and including the famous 
city of Strasbourg (German, Strasshurg), was transferred to 
Germany under the name of Elsass. Northwest from the 
Vosges the boundary runs arbitrarily across the uplands to 
the little Grand Duchy of Luxembourg on the southern slope 



THE NORTHEASTERN FRONTIER 9 

of the Ardennes highland, traversing the hills and valleys, first 
on the east then on the west of the north-flowing Moselle, with 
little regard to local features; thus the French province of 
Lorraine was divided, and a part of it, including the city of 
Metz on the Moselle north of the confluence of the Meurthe, 
was transferred to Germany under the name of Lothringen. 
The Luxembourg frontier, narrowed to less than 10 k. where 
it faces France, is followed by that of Belgium along the south- 
ern slope of the Ardennes, beyond which we return north- 
westward across the lowlands to the coast near Dunkirk, 
where this description began. 

Back of the disputed northeastern frontier the French 
established the strong fortresses of Belfort near the boundary 
in the passage south of the Vosges, Epinal on the western 
slope of the Vosges, Toul on the upper Moselle, Verdun on 
the middle Meuse, Mezieres on the Meuse near its entrance 
into the gorge by which it trenches the Ardennes, and 
Maubeuge, near the border farther northwest; these for- 
tresses (the last two, unfinished) will be referred to again in 
the accounts of their several districts. 

4. Rivers and Cities. The northeastern frontier of France 
is exceptional in being drained by rivers which flow through 
foreign territory on their way to the sea, as will be detailed 
farther on. This is nowhere else the case. A large northern 
area — the greater part of the so-called Paris basin — is 
drained northwestward to the English Channel by the Seine, 
with Havre (population in 1911, 136,159) on the northern 
side of its estuary, Rouen (124,987) on its right or northern 
bank 70 k. inland, and Paris (2,888,110) on both sides 
of the river near the center of the basin, 170 k. from the 
sea; a number of branches — Oise, Aisne, Marne, Seine, 
Armengon, Yonne, and many smaller streams — converge 



10 



GENERAL ACCOUNT 



toward this center from the northeast, east, and southeast. 
In the plains east of Paris, drained by these rivers, the 
largest cities are Rheims (French, Reims; 115,178) and 
Troyes (55,486) . The Somme, on which Amiens (93,207) is the 




Fig. 3. The RI^^KS and Cities of Northern France 

chief city, is the largest of several smaller rivers flowing north- 
westward to the Channel north of the Seine. The eastern 
part of the Central Highlands is drained northward through 
open valleys by the Loire and the Allier; these unite in a 
trunk stream which, under the name of Loire, turns west- 
ward and has the historic cities of Orleans (72,096), Blois 
(population of cities of less than 50,000 inhabitants is not 



RIVERS OF THE NORTHEASTERN FRONTIER 11 

given), Tours (73,398), and Angers (83,786) on its banks, and 
the port of Nantes (170,535) at the head of its estuary, which 
opens to the sea south of the peninsula of Brittany. 

5. Rivers of the Northeastern Frontier. We now return to 
the northeastern border of France, where the French rivers 
traverse foreign territory in their lower courses. The Moselle 
and the Meurthe, flowing northwestward from the Vosges, 
join under the former name, with the important city of 
Nancy (119,949) on the Meurthe 10 k. above the conflu- 
ence; then the single river turning northward and cross- 
ing the boundary in an open valley south of Metz, takes 
the German name of Mosel, turns northeast through a deep 
and winding valley, and joins the Rhine in the middle of its 
gorge through the broad highlands known as the Slate moun- 
tains (German, Schiefergehirge) : at the junction lies Coblentz, 
a modernized form of the Latin name, Confluentia; and 
further down the Rhine lies Koln, which we know better in 
its French form, Cologne, the modernized Latin name of the 
Roman Colonia, established nearly 2000 years ago. It was 
from points on the Rhine between these two cities that 
German strategic railroads were built westward along the 
northern base of the Slate mountain highlands to the frontier 
of Belgium near Liege (German Liittich) in the years pre- 
ceding the war, evidently in readiness for use in the pre- 
meditated invasion of that neutral country. 

The Meuse, rising in the hills west of the Vosges, flows 
north and northwest as an almost branchless trunk through 
a beautiful winding valley in the uplands between the 
Moselle on one side and the northeastern tributaries of the 
Seine system on the other; thus approaching the frontier on 
the hilly southern border of the Ardennes, the Meuse receives 
the Chiers from the east, below the junction of which Hes 



12 GENERAL ACCOUNT 

Sedan, and the Sermonne from the west, with M^zieres- 
Charleville on its bent course near-by: the river then turns 
north again and trenches the broad highland of the Ardennes 
in a deep and winding gorge, shifting the boundary 35 k. 
northward with it; next bending northeastward along the 
northern slope of the Ardennes, and northward near the east- 
ern border of Belgium, with Namur and Liege at the elbows, 
it continues to and through Holland, where it is called the 
Maas, and finally joins the complex estuary of the lower 
Rhine. 

In the lower region farther northwest, the boundary is again 
bent outward, but not so far as on the Meuse, at the crossing 
of three small rivers : the Sambre, the Escaut, and the Lys. 
Here a number of details may be mentioned, because of their 
importance in the war. The Sambre, flowing northeastward 
from the rolling uplands of a salient French area in which lies 
the fortified city of Maubeuge near the point where Caesar 
" overcame the Nervii," crosses the border and runs along the 
northern slope of the Ardennes; Charleroi in the Belgian coal 
field, lies on its mid-length; it flows into the Meuse at the 
Namur elbow. The upper Escaut, on which Cambrai and 
Valenciennes are situated, is joined in the lowland near the 
boundary by the Scarpe, on which Arras and Douai are 
placed; the Belgian city of Tournai is on the northward 
course of the Escaut not far beyond the boundary; Mons lies 
in Belgium about midway between Tournai and Charleroi. 
The Lys, flowing in another lowland northeastward across the 
border, receives some small branches from the south, on one 
of which lies Lille (217,807), with Roubaix (122,723) and 
Tourcoing (82,644) near-by in a famous industrial district; 
Courtrai lies on the Lys a short distance in Belgium; farther 
on, Ghent (Gand) is situated at the junction of the Lys with 



THE CLIMATE OF FRANCE 13 

the Escaut, which then turning eastward with the name of 
Schelde, turns north again and then north v/est; here it 
expands, with Antwerp (Anvers) at the head of the tide, 
into an estuary, the southwesternmost of several broadened 
coastal waterways, and reaches the sea by passing 50 k. 
through Dutch territory. Still farther toward the northern 
corner of France, the Yser, a small stream, flows eastward 
across the boundary, then northward to the coast; Ypres 
lies on one of its little branches in Belgium, and Nieuport 
marks its mouth in the dunes. 

It is noteworthy that France has only five cities — Paris, Mar- 
seilles, Lyons, Bordeaux, and Lille — with populations over 200,000; 
and only ten more with populations over 100,000, of which Nantes, 
Havre, Rouen, Roubaix, Nancy, and Rheims are in the northern 
half of the country. The population of Paris is about as great as 
that of the fourteen other French cities which exceed 100,000. 

6. The Climate of France. The climate of France is much 
more temperate than the climate of an area of the same lati- 
tude in central or eastern North Anierica. The prevailing 
winds come from the west and bring with them the tempering 
influences of the ocean; moreover, they come somewhat from 
the southwest in winter and thus diminish the cold, and some- 
what from the northwest in summer and thus moderate the 
heat which would otherwise be felt. The mean temperature 
in January (from 6° C. = 43° F. in the south to 2° C. = 36° F. 
in the northeast) corresponds to that of North Carolina and 
northern Georgia or of Arkansas and Oklahoma in the same 
month. Winter weather is frequently cloudy and wet; hence 
the air is chilling though the temperature is not very low. The 
coldest winter winds are from the continental interior on the 
northeast. The mean temperature in July (from 24° C. = 
75° F. in the southeast to 18° C. = 64° F. in the northwest) 



14 GENERAL ACCOUNT 

corresponds to the July mean of southern Pennsylvania and 
Ohio or of Wisconsin and North Dakota. The extremes of 
both seasons are less in France than in the central United 
States. 

The annual rainfall varies from 500 to 1000 millimeters (20 
to 40 inches), corresponding in general terms to that of eastern 
Nebraska and Iowa. Snowfall is rarely heavy, even in the 
north; and as the winds that follow snow storms usually come 
from the ocean at a temperature above freezing, snow seldom 
lies long on the ground. Weather changes, including the large 
cloudy areas of low barometric pressure with shifting winds 
and rain or snow, as well as the smaller thunder storms of 
summer, advance in a general way from southwest to north- 
east, as in the eastern United Statos; but the tracks of low- 
pressure centers, which often traverse the United States, 
usually pass to the north of France in spite of its relatively 
high latitude; hence France more often receives the southerly 
than the northerly winds that spiral around such centers. 

The climate of northern and central France is fitting for wheat 
and other grains. Through the southeastern half of the country the 
vine is extensively cultivated and wine of many kinds is produced 
in great amount. In the extreme southeast the fig, the ohve, and the 
orange flourish. Most of the common trees are of familiar kinds: 
they include oaks, maples, elm, beech, birch, chestnut, pine, ash, 
poplar, and willow. The genet or broom-plant is abundant in 
uncultivated fields; heather prevails in moorland districts. 

7. Government. France was a kingdom for centuries under 
the Orleans and Bourbon dynasties before the First Republic 
was established, following the terrible revolution which began 
in 1789. The republic was replaced by the First Empire under 
Napoleon in 1804. In 1814 the kingdom was restored under 
the Bourbon dynasty, and continued with a short interruption 



GOVERNMENT 15 

due to the return of Napoleon in 1815 (Louis XVIII, 1814, 
Charles X, 1824) until the revolution of 1830, when the Bour- 
bons were replaced by Louis Philippe of the Orleans dy- 
nasty. Another revolution in 1848 caused the abdication of 
Louis Philippe and the institution of a second Republic, with 
Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, nephew of the first emperor, 
chosen as president by popular vote. Four years later the 
president of the repubHc took the title of Napoleon III, and 
the Second Empire was established. This lasted until the 
surrender of the Emperor to the Germans at Sedan in 1870, 
when a revolutionary government estabhshed itself in Paris 
and subsequently inaugurated the third Republic, which has 
now endured longer than any form of government since the 
old kingdom. 

The Government thus constituted includes a Chamber of 
Deputies with nearly 600 members elected by universal 
(male) suffrage every four years, and a Senate of 300 mem- 
bers who are chosen by electoral colleges, consisting of local 
deputies and other officials, for nine years in three groups, one 
group every three years. Legislation may be initiated or 
amended in either body, but must be passed by both. The 
president of the Republic is elected for seven years by the 
senators and deputies in joint session, known as the constitu- 
tional assembly; these elections are not preceded by a popular 
campaign, but are accomplished promptly when a presidential 
term lapses, or is closed by resignation or death. The presi- 
dents of the third repubhc have been Thiers, 1871; Mac- 
Mahon, 1873; Grevy, 1879; Carnot, 1887; Casimir-Perier, 
1894; Faure, 1895; Loubet, 1899; Failleres, 1906; Poincare, 
1913. 

The president is supported by a cabinet or ministry 
(ministere) the members of which (ministres) are selected by a 



16 GENERAL ACCOUNT 

political leader. The chief members are the ministers of 
finance, war, marine, interior, justice, foreign affairs, colonies, 
public instruction, etc. The ministry represents the domi- 
nant group or bloc of parties in the chamber of deputies; the 
ministry usually resigns when its policy is defeated by the 
chamber, and another leader is then selected by the president 
to form a new ministry. Thus the ministry does not repre- 
sent the policy of the president, as the cabinet does in the 
United States, nor of a single political party, but of the 
people as reflected by a majority of the deputies, temporarily 
united in a hloc or coalition of several parties. 

France was formerly divided into some thirty provinces, such as 
Provence, Gascony, Champagne, Normandy; it is now divided 
into eighty-seven departments, from which deputies are elected. 
The departments are usually named after the rivers that they partly 
include, as Aisne, Oise, Seine et Marne, Meurthe et Moselle. The 
administration of each department is in charge of a prefect, who is 
appointed by the president of the repubhc on the recommendation 
of the minister of the interior. The departments are divided into 
362 arrondissements, and these into 2915 cantons and over 36,200 
communes. 

The chief external possessions of France are Algiers and Tunis in 
north Africa; several large equatorial provinces in Africa south of 
the western Sahara and north of the Congo; Madagascar, the large 
island east of southern Africa; Indo-China, south of China proper; 
and New Caledonia and the Society Islands in the Pacific Ocean. 

8. Public Works: Roads. The excellent highways of France 
{Routes nationales, Routes departementales) are among the most 
conspicuous of the many excellent products of the Depart- 
ment of Public Works. The pressing need of a great highway 
system in the United States can be better understood after a 
visit to France. The Routes Nationales are so planned as to 
provide thoroughfares connecting all the important centers 



PUBLIC WORKS 17 

of population. They are carefully located and excessive 
gradients are avoided; for over a century they have con- 
tributed greatly to the thrift of rural France. It not infre- 
quently happens that a modern road follows, for a greater or 
less distance, an ancient Roman road, traces of which may 
still be recognized even where it is abandoned. The less 
important local roads are in the care of the communes that 
they serve. 

Each main road has a name, as Route de Paris a Nancy, which is 
repeatedly given on signs along its course. Distances are accurately 
indicated on the national roads by larger stones at every kilometer, 
and by smaller stones at every tenth of a kilometer. Trim heaps of 
broken stone, ready for mending the surface, are — at least in times 
of peace — characteristic features of the unfenced roadside. Village 
names are indicated, together with the department and arrondisse- 
ment to which they belong, on signs at the entrance of the main 
roads. The rule of the road is, as in the United States, '' turn to the 
right/' and not as in Great Britain, " turn to the left." 

Canals follow many of the larger valleys. They are so 
located as to afford communication not only along each main 
river valley, but also over low passes between the valleys of 
neighboring river systems. They not infrequently pass under 
divides in tunnels two or three kilometers in length. Canals 
are supplemented by navigable rivers, improved by dams and 
locks. Chains laid along the bed of certain rivers are passed 
over a drum on tow-boats and are thus used to drag barges 
against the current. Although supplanted by railways as a 
means of rapid transportation, the canals still have a large 
value in keeping down the charges for slow freight. 

Railways, some of which are owned by the State, are of two 
gauges: standard, 1.44 m. (4 ft. 8| in.) and narrow, 1 m.; the 
latter are for local service on branch lines of light traffic. 
Railways are so numerous that they cannot be shown on 



18 GENERAL ACCOUNT 

the small maps in this book. The strength of bridge construc- 
tion over or under railways and the number and height of 
railway viaducts are impressive. The frequent use of skewed 
arches of stone or brick is surprising to visitors from a country 
where square bridges of wood, steel, or concrete prevail. 

Passenger cars (wagons) for local service are of small length, 
divided into transverse compartments, entered at either side; in 
trains of such cars one cannot pass from compartment to compart- 
ment, much less from car to car. On express trains, longer cars 
connected by " vestibules " and divided into compartments with a 
corridor on one side, are generally used, but these also have doors on 
both sides, sometimes for each compartment. The cars or compart- 
ments are of three classes; the class chosen {premiere, seconde (pron. 
segonde), troisieme) must be specified when buying a ticket. Tickets 
are usually examined as the passenger goes from the waiting room 
to the platform, and collected as he leaves the station of desti- 
nation. 

Forests. Certain forests in France are under governmental 
care, as timber is of high value in a country of ancient occupa- 
tion. Many of the forested areas are located on uplands of 
relatively infertile soil, or of so uneven a surface as to make 
their use difficult for other purposes than tree-growing. 
Most of the forests are traversed by many rectilinear lanes, 
laid out in geometrical pattern so as to intersect at selected 
centers, and used in exploitation of timber. 

Harbors. Harbor works are extensive and elaborate. They 
are to be seen at all the ports along the clift coast of Nor- 
mandy and Picardy, and along the dune-bordered coast of 
Flanders, where they include jetties to prevent the closing 
of the harbor entrance by the 'long-shore drift of sand and 
gravel, and stone wharves adjoining dredged docks. 

Topographic maps. The topographic map of the general 
staff, Carte de France de rEtat-major, is the standard on which 



TOPOGRAPHIC MAPS 19 

all other modern maps of France are based. It is the work of 
army engineers begun in 1818, finished in 1866, revised in 
later years, and published by the Geographical Service of the 
Army in 274 sheets on a scale of 1 : 80,000 (8 kilometers = 1 
decimeter, or about 1 mile = f inch) . Another edition of the 
same survey, revised, is published in quarter-sheets on a scale 
of 1 : 50,000. Selected rectangles from the 1 : 50,000 quarter- 
sheets are here reproduced on half-scale (1:100,000, or 1 cm. 
= 1 k.) on pages 60, 74, 78, 90, 94, 118, 126, 160; their location 
is shown by small rectangles, with page numbers, in the maps 
on pages 28, 54, 67, 134. 

These maps are printed in black. Relief is well indicated by down- 
slope lines, or hachures, which are drawn short, heavy, and close-set 
for steep slopes, long, fine, and open-spaced for gentle slopes. Flood- 
plains subject to overflow are stippled; small streams are shown by 
single waving lines; larger streams by double lines with the included 
space shaded: forests, nearly all of which have special names, by 
conventional tree-signs; roads, by double lines with unshaded space 
between, three grades of importance being indicated by the width 
of the space (rows of trees adjoining the national roads are shown by 
dots); lanes, by single lines; paths, by dotted lines; railways by 
single heavy lines; canals, by three close-set lines, the middle line 
heaviest. Altitudes are given in meters for occasional points. 
Cities and villages are shown with the pattern of their chief streets. 
Boundaries of departments are marked with strong short-dash lines, 
the seat of their prefecture being marked with a small rectangle 
containing the letters PF; boundaries of cantons are marked with 
dotted fines, the name of their chief town being adjoined by a small 
oval containing the letters CT. 

Maps based on a later survey along the northeastern frontier have 
been prepared on a scale of 1 : 20,000, with altitudes shown by con- 
tour lines of 5 m. interval; these sheets are printed in several 
colors; they are not sold to the pubfic. 

Reductions of the standard 80,000th map have been pub- 
lished on smaller scales and in various styles by several 



20 GENERAL ACCOUNT 

departments of the government. Those prepared by the Geo- 
graphical Service of the Army and by the Ministry of Public 
Works are both on a scale of 1 : 200,000; the first in 78 sheets, 
the second in 135. The maps of the Geographical Service are 
very legibly printed in five colors; the relief in brown shad- 
ing with 20 m. sketched contours, the water in blue, forests 
in green, names and railways in black, towns and highways 
in red. These maps are the most serviceable for general use. 

9. Money. French money is reckoned in francs and centimes. A 
franc is normally worth $0.19; five centimes or a sou is about equiva- 
lent to a cent; 10 centimes or two sous, to an English penny. Five 
francs are almost the same as a dollar, and 25 francs are closely 
equivalent to a pound sterling. 

French coins are : copper; 5 centimes or 1 sou; 10 centimes or 2 
sous, 
silver; 50 centimes = lOsousor half a franc; 
1 franc; 2 francs; 5 francs. 
[Note : Many Belgian and Italian silver coins, nominally 
equivalent to French money, do not pass at their face 
value.) 

gold; 10 francs; 20 francs = a napoleon. 
English money: 12 pennies = 1 shilhng = $0.24. 
20 shiUings = 1 pound = $4.84. 
(21 shillings = 1 guinea). 
English coins are: copper; halfpenny; penny. 

silver; threepence; sixpence; shilling; two 
shillings (florin) ; two and a half shilhngs 
(half crown); five shillings (crown), 
gold; 10 shillings (half sovereign) ; 20 shil- 
lings (sovereign). 
Weights and Measures. The decimal system of weights and 
measures, adopted by the French near the close of the eighteenth 
century and by most countries of Europe since then, is based on the 
unit of linear measure, or meter (metre), which was intended to be 
and is almost exactly 1/10,000,000 of the meridian quadrant of 
Paris. It equals 39.37 inches or 3.28 feet. Its multiples and frac- 
tions and their equivalents are: — 



MONEY, WEIGHTS AND MEASURES 21 

Linear measure. Meters. Inches. Feet. Miles. 

kilometer 1000 .... 3281 0.62138 

hectometer 

decameter 

meter 

decimeter 

centimeter 

millimeter 



too 


328.1 


10 


32.81 


1 39.37 


3.281 


.1 3.94 


0.328 


.01 0.39 


0.033 


.001 0.04 


0.003 


f or f of a mile. 





One kilometer is roughly 

Areas are expressed in square meters = 1550.0 square inches, or 
10.76 square feet; in ares = 100 square meters; and in hectares = 
10,000 square meters = 2.471 acres; hence 260 hectares about 
equal one square mile. 

Volumes. The unit of volume is a cubic decimeter, called a liter 
(litre) = 61.02 cubic inches = 1.06 U. S. quarts = 0.88 British 
quart. 

Weights. The ordinary unit of weight is the kilogram, which is 
the weight of a liter of water under standard conditions = 2.205 
pounds. 

Temperatures. The Centigrade thermometer scale has 0° at the 
freezing point and 100° at the boiling point of water, under stand- 
ard conditions. To convert Centigrade into Fahrenheit degrees, 
multiply by f aiid add 32°. To convert Fahrenheit into Centigrade 
degrees, subtract 32° and multiply by f . 

Atmospheric Pressure. French weather maps represent atmos- 
pheric pressure in miUimeters: normal pressure is taken to be 
760 mm. = 29.92 inches. 



CHAPTER II 



THE GEOGRAPHICAL FEATURES OF NORTHERN 
FRANCE 

10. The Paris Basin. The greater part of northern France 
is occupied by the so-called Paris basin, which gains its name 




Fig. 4. The Paris Basin and its Saddles 

from the basin-like slope of the rock layers from all sides 
towards Paris as a center. The relation between the rock 

22 



THE PARIS BASIN 23 

layers and the surface forms here occurring is moreover in 
many ways so manifest and so significant, that an understand- 
ing of it aids the memory in placing a multitude of details in 
their proper position with respect to the larger features of 
which they are parts. 

The Bordering Uplands and Highlands. The stratified 
formations occupying the Paris basin lie, with a total thick- 
ness of hundreds or thousands of meters, upon a foundation of 
ancient and disordered rocks which emerge in four upland 
or highland areas of unequal size around the basin borders 
as shown in Fig. 4: these are the Armorican area on the west, 
which includes the peninsula of Brittany and an adjoining 
part of the mainland, the extensive Central Highlands on the 
south, the Vosges (German, Vogesen) of comparatively small 
area on the east, and the Ardennes with their eastern exten- 
sion into the Slate-mountain highlands (German, Schiefer- 
gebirge) on the northeast. It is highly probable that the 
strata of the Paris basin, shown in section across the middle of 
Fig. 4, once overlapped the four areas of ancient foundation 
rocks much farther than they do now, and that they have been 
worn back because those areas are regions of upheaval; the 
Paris basin, on the other hand, is a region of relative depres- 
sion, where the covering strata, broadly overspreading the 
disordered foundation rocks, have been preserved; the oldest 
members of the basin series crop out around the margin of 
the basin, the youngest member occupies its center. 

The successive strata may therefore be compared to a nest of very 
shallow dishes, the largest one at the base, the smallest at the top, 
yet so nicely fitted together that the edges of all rise to about 
the same altitude. But the basin structure has many irregularities: 
Paris lies near its center, and the edges of the successive formations 
are farther apart on the east side than on the west; indeed, the basal 



24 GEOGRAPHICAL FEATURES 

members of the series that are broadly exposed along the border of 
the Vosges and in Lorraine are hardly seen elsewhere; and to the 
north, the lower members are overspread by an upper member — 
the chalk — so far that they are concealed as it laps upon the 
foundation rocks which ascend gradually eastward in the Ardennes. 

11. The Four Saddles. Moreover, as may be seen in Fig. 4, 
the basin strata extend outward across the four depressions or 
'' saddles " that separate the four enclosing uplands of ancient 
rocks. A broad and flat northwestern saddle, forming the 
chalk uplands of Picardy and Normandy, occupies the 330 k. 
space between the Ardennes highlands on the north of the 
basin and the hilly Armorican area on the west; the north- 
western side of this saddle is cut off by the sea. A narrow 
southwestern saddle, about 60 k. across, lies between the 
Armorican area on the west and the Central Highlands on the 
south, and thus connects the Paris basin with the lowlands of 
Gascony : this may be called the Poitou saddle, after the old 
province of that district. A broader southeastern saddle, 
150 k. in width, rises gradually and forms the so-called plateau 
of Langres, between the Morvan, a northeastern extension of 
the Central Highlands, on one side, and the much smaller 
mountainous mass of the Vosges on the other; its steeper 
southeastern side, the southern part of which is known as the 
" Golden Slope " (la CSte d^Or), with Dijon near its base, 
descends rapidly to the flat basin of the Saone, known as the 
plain of la Bresse, The fourth and northeastern, or Lorraine 
saddle, broadly exposing the lowest members of the basin 
series, has a width of 75 k. between the Vosges on the east and 
the Slate-mountain highlands on the north; this saddle 
stretches eastward into Germany and, rising gradually, is 
obliquely cut off by the broad valley-lowland of the middle 
Rhine; its eastern upland border, prolonged northward from 



PRODUCTS OF HIGHLANDS AND BASIN 25 

the Vosges and overlooking the Rhine lowland, is known as 
the Hardt. 

It should be borne in mind that the Seine and its branches drain 
only a part of the Paris basin. In the northwest, several small rivers 
— the Somme and others on the northeast of the Seine, the Risle, 
Touque, Dives, and Orne on the southwest — have independent 
courses to the Channel. In the northeast, the Meuse and the 
Moselle flow out from the border of the basin through the adjoining 
uplands to the Rhine. In the south, the Loire, after emerging from 
the Central Highlands, turns westward across the southern part of 
the basin, receives certain tributaries — chiefly the Loir and the 
Sarthe — from the western part of the basin, as well as others from 
the south, and reaches the sea south of Brittany. 

12. Products of the Highlands and the Basin. The Paris basin, dif- 
fering from the enclosing uplands and highlands in the composition 
and attitude of its rocks, therefore differs also in form, soil, and min- 
eral products. The uplands and highlands consist of granite, gneiss, 
schists, and other crystalline rocks, generally resistant to weathering, 
as well as of various stratified rocks, greatly deformed, much more 
ancient than those of the Paris basin, and usually more indurated. 
Coal is found within the boundaries of France only in these ancient 
foundation rocks: the Central plateau includes the important 
though small coal basin of St. Etienne in a valley that indents the 
middle of its eastern side, southwest of Lyons; not far north in 
another highland valley is Le Creuzot, with its great iron works. 
Another important coal area, known as the Sarre (German, Saar) 
basin after the branch of the Moselle which it borders, lies in Ger- 
man territory, as shown on p. 158, south of the Slate-mountain 
uplands by which the Lorraine saddle is limited on the north. The 
extensive coal basin of Belgium, shown on p. 153, lies along the 
northern side of the Ardennes, and extends westward under the 
cover of the overlapping basin strata into northern France, where its 
deep mines determine the situation of a number of industrial cities, 
of which the chief are Douai and Lens. Iron ore occurs in several 
districts of the ancient foundation rocks, especially in the northern 
arm of the Armorican area, known as the Cotentin; hence important 
iron works have been established near by in the ancient city of Caen. 



26 GEOGRAPHICAL FEATURES 

The strata of the Paris basin include limestones, chalk, marls, 
sandstones, and clays, all lying nearly horizontal. Certain members 
of the series contain important iron ores; the chief of these lie in the 
uplands west of Metz, and largely in a part of Lorraine that was 
taken by Germany in 1871 (see p. 77). But as a rule the strati- 
fied formations yield few important mineral products, apart from 
building stones, hmestone, cement, gypsum, and road metal. The 
best building stones are limestones and sandstones, which are easily 
carved when fresh from the quarry, but which become hard and 
durable after exposure to the weather. Flint concretions from the 
chalk provide a resistant road cover. 

As the basin strata outcrop in northeastern France in roughly 
concentric arcs, or aureoles. Fig. 13, around Paris as a center, the 
varied forms of the surface, modelled by the action of erosional proc- 
esses on the nested strata of varying resistance, as well as the soils 
and with them the agricultural products of the basin area, are 
closely sympathetic with the patterns of the concentric structural 
arcs; likewise, local industries as affected by soils and products, 
drainage lines and transportation routes as affected by surface 
forms, and population, both rural and urban, as affected by all these 
elements, are repeatedly found to be influenced if not controlled in 
their distribution by the same structural factors, as will be fully 
shown on later pages. 



CHAPTER III 

THE REGION AROUND PARIS 

13. The Three Sectors centering at Paris. The confluence 
at Paris of the Seine and the Marne, each of which has re- 
ceived many converging tributaries in its upper course, may 
be taken to mark the drainage center of the Paris basin. The 
same two branch rivers and the trunk river in which they 
unite serve to divide the central area of the basin into three 
unequal sectors: one of about a right angle and a half on 
the south, between the upper and lower Seine; another of 
the same amplitude on the north between the Marne and the 
lower Seine; and a third of about 90° on the east between the 
Marne and the upper Seine. Although the sectors are here 
named after three of the cardinal points, it should be noted 
that the course of the upper Seine is about northwest; that 
of the Marne, west-southwest; and that of the lower Seine, 
west-northwest; hence the sectors do not precisely face the 
points for which they are named. 

The southern sector is largely occupied by uplands, which 
are chiefly formed of the youngest, uppermost members of the 
heavy series of basin strata, lying essentially horizontal. 
Some 60 k. or more to the south and southwest these strata 
have a broadly continuous surface; near Paris they are sepa- 
rated by irregularly branching valleys into discontinuous 
tabular masses at remarkably uniform altitudes of 160 or 
170 m. The eastern sector begins as a lowland 80 or 90 m. in 
altitude and ascends slowly eastward with the rising strata 

27 



28 



THE REGION AROUND PARIS 




CENTRAL AREA OF THE PARIS BASIN 29 

to an upland 200 m. or more in altitude, where practically all 
traces of the uppermost beds, 100 m. or more in thickness, 
have been worn away. In the northern sector, the upper- 
most strata have been less completely removed; they are 
seen chiefly in the neighborhood of Paris as isolated residual 
hills, from 130 to 200 m. in altitude, surmounting the lowland 
(60-90 m.) of underlying strata, which rise slowly westward 
and northward to an upland (140-170 m.) that is continuous. 




Fig. 6. Bird's-Eye Diagram. Central Area of Paris Basin 

except for river valleys, with the upland of the eastern sector. 
The eastern part of the northern sector is cut by the Ourcq, 
flowing south westward to the Marne; the western part is cut 
across on a parallel line of greater length by the Oise, which 
joins the Seine at its second northern loop below Paris. 

This arrangement of uplands and lowlands is very roughly sum- 
marized in Fig. 6, by which the unsymmetrical "nesting " of the 
basin strata, already referred to on an earlier page, may be made 
more apparent than before. It thus appears that the center of the 
Paris basin, as marked by the uppermost members of the basin series, 
lies somewhat to the south of the center as marked by the conver- 
gence of the chief rivers at the site of the capital city. The division 



30 THE REGION AROUND PARIS 

of the Parisian district into sectors, as here indicated, is not exact 
and geometrical, but rough and geographical, for the three chief 
rivers are not rectilinear. The upper Seine is moderately sinuous; 
the Marne is strikingly sinuous; the lower Seine is exceedingly 
sinuous, especially at and next below Paris. Near the central area 
the rivers are about 20 m. above sea level; the adjoining lowlands are 
from 20 to 60 m. higher. The three sectors may now be described 
more in detail. 

14. The Southern Sector. The discontinuous tabular up- 
lands, O, Fig. 6, south of the Seine near Paris fall off eastward 
and less distinctly westward in irregular scarps, notched by 
many valleys and ravines, toward lower lands bordering 
the upper and the lower Seine. The scarp to the east is the 
stronger of the two, because the lowland there near the basin 
center is lower than on the west. The valleys that notch the 
scarps become shallower toward their heads. The forest of 
Fontainebleau lies on the upland margin (130 m.) 60 k. south 
of Paris; and the historic town of the same name occupies a 
lowland site near the Seine. A slight predominance of north- 
west-southeast valleys becomes more marked as Paris is 
approached : one such valley, drained to the northwest, cuts 
off a strip of the even upland, 25 k. long and from 2 to 4 k. 
wide, that lies tangent to the three southern loops of the Seine 
below Paris; another such valley, drained to the Seine above 
Paris, almost cuts off a shorter, irregular portion of the upland 
near the blunt apex of the sector. 

The location of cities and towns near Paris on the south may be 
roughly expressed in terms of the features thus described. Sceaux 
lies on the high ground near the east end of the shorter detached 
portion of the upland, and enjoys a delightful prospect over the low- 
land adjoining the upper Seine; Meudon lies on a northern spur of 
the same upland detachment, and overlooks the first southern loop 
of the Seine below Paris, across which the Bois de Boulogne is seen 



CITIES AND TOWNS SOUTH OF PARIS 31 

covering the terminal part spur of the lowland that enters this loop 
from the northeast. Sevres lies on the slope near the Seine below 
Meudon. Versailles (60,458) with its royal palace and gardens is 
situated near the head of the valley which cuts off the longer upland 
strip; St. Cyr, the seat of a famous military school, is at the northern 
base of the large upland area a little farther west. St. Cloud and its 
park occupy the eastern end of the longer detached upland strip, 
with a fine view up the Seine to Paris; St. Germain is at the northern 
base of this strip farther west, where it is touched by the second 




Fig. 7. Villages at Stkeam-head Springs 

southward loop of the Seine west of Paris. In this area of detached 
uplands, the smaller villages, most of which are of ancient or 
medieval origin, are frequently situated, as in Fig. 7, on the upland 
slopes where the higher beds of pervious limestones and sandstones 
rest, all horizontal, on impervious clays,; for at that level springs 
issue, on which the local water supply has for centuries been depend- 
ent. This primitive control of village location will be frequently met 
with in other parts of France. 

15. The Eastern Sector. The lowland of the 90° sector be- 
tween the Seine and the Marne rises eastward to an upland, 
1, Fig. 6, known as la Brie, part of which was overrun by the 
German army in August, 1914, as will be described on p. 114. 
The slope of the surface is, although gentle, distinctly greater 
than the fall of the rivers that drain it; hence their valleys 
increase in depth as they are followed upstream. Most of the 
streams evidently had a serpentine course before they began 
to erode the present valleys, for the valleys themselves are 



32 



THE REGION AROUND PARIS 



strikingly sinuous, with steep amphitheatral slopes, alternately 
on the right and left, opposite sloping spurs, alternately on the 
left and right. As the serpentine curves of rivers increase 
in size with increase of river volume, the valleys show the 
same systematic variation of form; thus the Yeres, a small 




Fig. 8. The Meandering Valley of the Yeres, looking East 

tributary of the upper Seine, has a valley with numerous, 
small, close-set bends as in Fig. 8; the Grand Morin, a 
somewhat larger tributary of the Marne, has a valley of 
larger pattern and therefore of fewer bends; and the Marne 
itself has a valley in which the bends are on a still larger scale 
and hence still fewer in number, as in Fig. 9. The city of 
Meaux, here shown, marks the nearest approach of the Ger- 
mans to Paris in September, 1914. 



THE VALLEY OF THE MARNE 



33 



A national highway and a main railway — Chemin de Fer de 
I'Est — which ascend the valley of the Marne on the way from Paris 




Fig. 9. Valley of the Maene at Meaux, looking East 

to Nancy, make short cuts across the valley-side spurs; the high- 
way is the shorter of the two lines, because it can follow steeper 



34 THE REGION AROUND PARIS 

gradients than the railway; both are much shorter than the river, 
as is shown in Fig. 9. It was across this sinuous valley that the 
French under General Joffre drove back the Germans in the Battle 
of the Marne in September, 1914. Another highway and a main 
railway — Chemin de Fer de Paris a Lyon et a la M^diterran^e, the 
so-called '^ P, L. M.^' — turn from the upper Seine valley into that 
of the Yeres, in order to make a direct cut southeastward across the 
lowland, thus saving a detour to the west made by the Seine itself, 
which they rejoin about midway in its valley through the upland, and 
there Melun is situated ; farther upstream, where the valley is deeper, 
it is more closely followed by the highway and the railway. The two 
lines a little beyond the point where they leave the Seine for their 
short cut are shown in Fig. 8. 

16. The Strata and the Soils of the Eastern Sector. The east- 
ern sector ofTers an excellent illustration of the relation which 



Fig. 10. Structure of the Brie Upland 

exists between rock structure — a subject which is too com- 
monly set aside as belonging only to geology — and surface 
conditions. The basin strata in this sector dip gently to the 
west at a slightly steeper angle than the inclination of the 
surface, as shown in Fig. 10; hence as they are cut across by 
the Seine and the Marne, their occasional outcrops appear in 
slanting belts on the valley sides, which vary in form and soil 
as they pass from belt to belt. The most resistant strata are 
the impure limestones (calcaire grossier) which form the strong 
east-facing escarpment where the upland of Brie falls off 
toward the lowland of Champagne, as will be further de- 
scribed in chapter VIII. 

It is noteworthy that, as a result of the strata being inclined 
at a steeper angle than the gentle descent of the surface as 



SOILS OF THE BRIE UPLAND 35 

shown in Fig. 10, their uppermost (youngest) members in 
this sector are reached on the lowest ground, while the lower- 
most (oldest) members of this district occupy the upland — 
but as will be seen later, still lower members occur in the low- 
lands farther east. As the successive strata overlap the slop- 
ing surface, the soils vary, and with variation of soils comes 
variation of living conditions. The strata that overlie the 
calcaire grassier and cover most of the Brie uplands weather 
into a poor, " cold " or wet soil, which was formerly left to 
forest growth, and which even where cleared and cultivated 
today does not give so good a return as the calcareous soils of 
the lower slope or as the loams of the lowlands farther west. 

These more fertile lowland areas have long been known for their 
thriving farms, each having its group of buildings enclosed by a 
rectangular wall, half a mile or more from its neighbors, instead of 
being compacted in villages such as are described above as having 
grown around the springs in the slopes of the uplands on the south of 
Paris, or such as will be described in section 56, grouped around the 
deep wells of the northwestern chalk country. It must be remem- 
bered that these varied relations between geographical factors and 
human conditions have long been well established in a country of so 
ancient settlement as France, where the manner of living and the loca- 
tion of settlements have been developed by primitive methods of trial 
adapted to simple, local needs through centuries of struggle for 
existence, and where satisfactory locations and occupations, when 
found, have been long adhered to. French geography is therefore in 
this respect utterly unlike the geography of the western United 
States, where the location of many a village has been arbitrarily 
determined by conditions little related to geographical factors. 

17. The Northern Sector. The broad sector north of Paris 
combines some of the features of its two neighbors. Its central 
part is chiefly a rolling lowland, similar in form and soil to the 
lower part of the eastern sector; but the lowland is here sur- 



36 THE REGION AROUND PARIS 

mounted by a number of hills or upland remnants, mostly of 
small area, although in composition and altitude similar to the 
large uplands of the southern sector. One of the smallest of 
the hills, of less height than the larger ones, is Montmartre, in 
the northern part of Paris; a chain of hills, about 20 k. in 
length, begins in the Butte Chaumont on the northeastern 
border of Paris and extends eastward in a rambling course to 
the north bank of the Marne. A range of hills begins 35 k. 
northeast of Paris and trends northwest; the southeastward 
prolongation of this line into the valley of the Marne marks 
the site of Meaux. A small ridge (170 m.) is tangent to the 
two northward loops of the Seine, 15 k. northwest of Paris; 
north of this ridge rise the subdivided heights of Mont- 
morency (182 m.), of oval area, 9 k. in length, 18 k. north- 
northwest of Paris; the little upland of Hautie (170 m.) of 
similar dimensions stands 30 k. to the northwest of the city, 
a short distance west of the confluence of the Seine and Oise, 
across the third southern loop of the trunk river below Paris. 
Nearly all the isolated hills near Paris are crowned by for- 
tresses and redoubts, formerly regarded as impregnable but 
now known not to be of sufficient strength to withstand 
bombardment by the heavy siege guns of modern warfare. 

The far northeastern uplands of the northern sector, from 
which the Germans were driven after the Battle of the Marne 
in September, 1914, and the northern extension of the sector 
in irregular, plateau-like segments beyond the east-west 
valley of the Aisne, where the battle front lies in the spring 
of 1918, will be described in chapter IX. The present account 
will not go beyond the upland area, known as Valois, which is 
limited on the north by the Aisne valley. The gradual ascent 
from the lowland (69-90 m.) near Paris to the Valois uplands 
(150-170 m.) is accompanied by changes in soil similar to 



THE SECTOR NORTH OF PARIS 37 

those described for the eastern sector; but while the ascend- 
ing surface was there comparatively continuous, except for a 
moderate number of radial valleys, it is here more interrupted 
by many rambling valleys, drained by branches of the 
Ourcq, Aisne, and Gise, as shown in Fig. 5. 

The upland is furthermore occasionally surmounted by hills, 
the most important of which constitute a narrow, east-west range 
about 13 k. south of the Aisne valley: it is 35 k. in length and from 
200 to 250 m. in altitude, and is cut through by a small stream at 
mid-length; the eastern half is mostly cleared; much of the western 
half is covered by the great forest of Villers-Cotterets, which also 
spreads across the uplands to the north and south; like most of the 
larger forests of France, this one is traversed by a system of lanes 
arra,nged in geometrical pattern, chiefly for use in management and 
exploitation. 

The northern margin of the upland overlooking the Aisne valley, 
like the margin of the rambling valleys which dissect the upland, is 
irregularly indented by the branching ravines of many small side 
streams. The general accordance of the upland level across the 
valleys, as well as the correspondence that may be noted in the rock 
layers on the two sides of the valleys, proves clearly enough that the 
upland would be a continuous surface but for the work of weather 
and streams in eroding valleys beneath it. This is a point of practi- 
cal importance, since it shows that when one valley-bounded segment 
of the upland is known, the neighboring segments may be known 
in a general way from it, for they all resemble one another in essential 
features, such as altitude, structure, and general pattern, although 
they differ from each other in individual features, such as extent,, and 
the number and direction of indenting ravines. It is the uncounted 
individual variations thus played on a simple scheme that charac- 
terize the Valois landscape. 

18. The Western Salients of the Northern Sector. The north- 
western part of the northern sector west of the Oise may be 
named after the district of Vexin, which it includes. Its 
western border resembles the eastern border of the eastern 



38 THE REGION AROUND PARIS 

sector in being determined by the gradual ascent of the rela- 
tively resistant calcaire grassier, which terminates in an 
escarpment overlooking an exterior lower land of weaker 
layers; but in the Vexin on the northwestern side of the Paris 
basin the ascent of the strata and the outlook of the escarp- 
ment are to the northwest, while in the Brie on the other side 
of the basin center they are to the east. The west-facing Vexin 
border is more irregular than the east-facing Brie border; its 
uplands advance westwards in several sahents between low- 
land reentrants, and the advancing salients are cut off in sepa- 
rate upland areas of different size by the valley of the Oise, 
which crosses the lowland reentrants, as shown on the map, 
p. 28. As a result the Oise valley varies greatly in width and 
quality; it is rather narrow and well enclosed where it tran- 
sects the resistant limestone strata of the upland sahents; 
it is broadly open. where it traverses the weaker strata of 
lowland reentrants. Here is the most open approach to 
Paris. 

The first of the reentrants occurs just below the confluence of the 
Aisne and the Oise; it is occupied to the east of the Oise by the 
forest of Compiegne, called after a city of that name near the conflu- 
ence. To the southwest of Compiegne, two contiguous cut-off salients 
(110-150 m.) divided by the river Breche, advance northwestward; 
Clermont Hes on the eastern border of the larger one. Another low- 
land reentrant is crossed by the Oise half way from the Aisne to the 
Seine; this will be referred to later in the account of the Pays de 
Bray, p. 140. The next salient forms a large upland which spreads 
southward to the Seine; its westernmost spurs (160 m.) are cut off 
from the main area by the south-flowing Epte. The upland of this 
salient is unlike the others in being surmounted by several small hills 
(190, 200 m.), Uke those near Paris but of greater altitude because 
the platform from which they rise is higher than the Paris lowland. 

19. Paris and its Neighborhood. The military visitor to Paris may 
find difficulty in selecting among its many attractions the few to 
which his limited time can be best devoted. If he passively follow 



THE NEIGHBORHOOD OF PARIS 39 

the conventional guidebook, he will be led, whether his tastes are 
artistic or not, to matchless galleries of painting and sculpture; or 
to famous buildings and monuments, whether or not he knows 
enough of history and architecture to appreciate them; but if his 
tastes are geographical, he will do well to select certain districts of 
medieval and modern Paris as samples for outdoor study. These 
should include parts of the old central city of narrow, irregular 
streets, and sections of the older and newer ramparts, marked by 
the ring of inner boulevards and of outer dismantled fortifications. 
A number of new avenues, cut through the older parts of the city, are 
striking and characteristic features. 

Excursions to high points of view are next to be commended; 
first, in the city, to the Butte Chaumont on the east, to Montmartre 
on the north, and to the Arc de Triomphe and the Eiffel Tower on 
the west; the vnde prospect from the top of the Arc, if permission be 
secured to make the ascent, is especially to be commended, with its 
view eastward down the finest avenue in the world — the Avenue of 
the Champs Elysees — to the Garden of the Tuileries, and westward 
to Neuilly and the Bois de Boulogne and across the loop of the 
Seine. Later, visits should be made outside of the city to the 
heights on the south near Meudon, and on the west above St. Cloud. 
A trip on the river is to be recommended; here a hand map is es- 
sential, in order not to lose one's bearings on the many river turns. 

The different parts of Paris and the towns of familiar names 
near by. Fig. 11, are best learned in relation to the loops of the 
Seine, to its right (north) and left (south) banks, and to the up- 
lands of the northern and southern sectors, above described. As 
to the river loops or meanders, let it be understood that the normal 
relation of valley-side spur, flood-plain scroll, and river meander is 
remarkably well shown at and below Paris: the spurs slope gradu- 
ally to their end and their down- valley side; the spur end and its 
down-valley side are adjoined by a flood-plain scroll; the river flows 
along the steeper up-valley slope of each spur, and around the base 
of the opposite amphitheatre in the valley side. 

With these points in mind, it is easy to remember that Vincennes 
and its woods, the Bois de Vincennes, lie east of Paris, north of the 
confluence of the Seine and Marne; Belleville is on the chain of hills 
near the Butte Chaumont; the center of Paris lies on the right 
bank of the first northward bend below the confluence of the Seine 



40 



THE REGION AROUND PARIS 



THE NEIGHBORHOOD OF PARIS 41 

and the Marne; part of the flat flood-plain scroll which fits into this 
northward bend along the left bank of the Seine in the western part 
of the city is occupied by the parade ground of the Champs de Mars. 
Farther along the same bank is the suburb of Grenelle, where a 
famous artesian well, dependent for its flow upon the basin structure 
of the region, serves as an important source of water supply, though 
supplemented by other weUs and more largely by surface aqueducts 
from neighboring valleys. 

The steep slope of the opposite amphitheatre rises to the Troca- 
d^ro, from which a long spur declines gradually southwestward with 
Passy on its steep eastern side along the right bank of the river; the 
flood-plain scroll that wraps around the west side of this spur and 
fits into the first southward loop of the river is occupied by Bou- 
logne-sur-Seine (57,027) with its Bois and by Neuilly, lately famous 
for its American hospital; part of the plain between these two towns 
is utilized for the level racecourse of Longchamps. Sevres and 
St. Cloud are on the left bank in the amphitheatre south of Bou- 
logne; the famous fortress of Mt. Valerien is on top of the spur, 
north of St. Cloud; St. Denis and Argenteuil mark the beginning 
and end of the amphitheatral slope around the first northward loop 
belo\y Paris; St. Germain lies on the farther part of the next am- 
phitheatre, which encloses the second southward loop, and its forest 
covers the spur which extends into the second northward loop; at 
the farther turn of this loop the Seine is joined by the Oise, on which 
Pontoise lies at the crossing of an ancient road. Poissy lies at the 
beginning of the next amphitheatre into which the third southern 
loop enters; and so on. 

The degree to which the centralization of government, arts, indus- 
tries, and traffic in Paris has been carried may be judged by the 
number of railways and national roads that converge to it, as the 
spokes of a wheel converge to the hub. A circle of 25 k. radius drawn 
around Paris cuts the main lines and various branches of the five 
chief railway systems of the West, the North, the East, the P. L. M. 
(Paris-Lyons-Mediterranean), and Orleans at some 15 points; it 
cuts also a similar number of national roads directed to as many 
important cities, some of which, like Bordeaux to the southwest, 
Lyons to the southeast, and Bale in northern Switzerland, are 400 or 
500 k. distant; short stretches of the roads to Lyons, Bale, and 
Nancy are shown in Figs. 8 and 9. 



42 



THE REGION AROUND PARIS 



The following pages are planned to make a circuit of the 
successive parts of the Paris basin, beginning on the east, and 
passing around by the north to the northwest, thus including 
as much of France as lies northeast of the Marne and the 



PARIS' 
(J) R28 




Fig. 12. Index of Outline Maps 

lower Seine. Brief accounts of adjacent regions farther north- 
east are added. The location of the outline maps which 
represent the areas described is indicated in Fig. 12; the maps 
will be referred to in the order here given from 1 to 7; the 
page numbers adjoining the map numbers indicate where the 
large-scale maps can be found. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE EASTERN HALF OF THE PARIS BASIN 

20. The Belted Relief of Northeastern France. The concen- 
tric belts in which the stratified formations outcrop in the 
eastern half of the Paris basin from the Central Highlands 
on the south to the Ardennes on the north, and the corre- 
spondingly concentric arrangement of uplands (shaded and 
numbered from 1 to 8 in Fig. 13) and lower lands (unshaded) 
following the outcrops of stronger and weaker strata, like 
aureoles around the Paris center, are the leading physio- 
graphic features of northeastern France. There are indeed 
no better illustrations of this kind of topography in the 
known world. As the variety of features is large, their 
description cannot be short. 

Each belt of weak strata is worn down, as in Fig. 14, in an 
unsjmimetrical depression, limited on the east by the long and 
gentle ascent of the next underlying resistant strata, and on 
the west by the steep scarp of the next overlying resistant 
strata. Conversely, each belt of resistant strata remains in 
relief as an unsymmetrical upland ridge, having a broad crest 
with a steep escarpment or scarp descending eastward to the 
depression excavated on the next underlying weak strata, and 
a long gradual slope descending westward to the depression 
excavated on the next overlying weak strata. Hence the 
*' grain " of the relief in this half of the Paris basin follows a 
series of upland belts arranged in concentric arcs, convex 
eastward, as above noted. 

43 



44 EASTERN HALF OF THE PARIS BASIN 

The eight upland belts are by no means alike. The first is 
of strong relief; the second is lower and of more delicate 
form; the third is the shortest of the series; the fourth and 
fifth are long and strong; the sixth is less distinct; the 
seventh is the least developed of all, and is characterized 
more by its limestone soils than by an unsymmetrical ridge 
form; the eighth is strong along the western border of the 
Vosges, but elsewhere is marked chiefly by its infertile sandy 
soils. The intermediate depressions also vary in dimensions 
and in form : it should be understood that, although unshaded 
in Fig. 13, they are not always lowlands of small altitude 
above sea level, nor are they always plains; some of them 
have a rolling or hilly surface 100 m. or more in altitude; but 
they are always lower than the adjoining upland belts. 

The resistant strata which determine an upland belt frequently 
crop out in bare ledges, or are covered only by a thin stony soil in 
the upper part of the steep scarp and over the broad crest of the 
upland; the weak strata, on the other hand, which are worn down 
in the longitudinal depression between two upland belts are usually 
concealed under a deep soil; the same is true of the lower slopes 
beneath the steep sc^rp on one side of an upland belt and on the 
long descent of the other side. 

Some of the upland belts are called cotes by the French, but the 
word has no special meaning; the Spanish etymological equivalent, 
cuesta (pronounced in two syllables, kwes-ta), locally employed for 
certain unsymmetrical upland ridges on our Mexican frontier, has 
been adopted by a number of American geographers as a special 
name for forms of this kind and will here be sometimes used. The 
steep scarp of a cuesta is often called its face; and the long slope of 
the other side is called its back. The unsymmetrical depression or 
lowland between two cuestas has no technical name; it can hardly 
be called a " valley," because it is drained by many streams instead 
of by one. 

While the upland belts are thus arranged in concentric 
arcs, the valleys of the larger rivers are otherwise disposed. 



UPLAND BELTS OF NORTHEASTERN FRANCE 45 




200 MILES 



O 200 400 K. 

Fig. 13. Physiographic Features of Northeastern Francje 



46 



EASTERN HALF OF THE PARIS BASIN 



A number of rivers flow in roughly radial fashion, converging 
toward Paris; and as travel and transportation are today 
conducted chiefly along the river valleys, it follows that the 
inter-upland depressions are of secondary importance as lines 
of movement. Nevertheless it is primarily in terms of the 




Upland Belts and 



upland belts and the depressions between them that the 
physical features of the half -basin east of Paris are best pre- 
sented; after they are apprehended, the river and valleys, the 




Fig. 15. The Steep Scarp of an Upland Belt 

cities, railways, and other features can be duly located with ^ 
respect to them. 



2 1 . The Upland Belts as Natural Defences . Without includ- 
ing the tabular hills of uppermost sandstones already described 
on the south of Paris, all but one of the eight more or less con- 
tinuous upland belts, separated by longitudinal depressions 
and varying greatly in height, breadth, and pattern, are 
crossed by a radial line 350 k. in length from the basin center 
to the Vosges. The number would be increased if several 
subordinate cuesta-like belts or benches were counted. 



UPLAND BELTS AS NATURAL DEFENCES 



47 



It has long been remarked that this arrangement of the 
rehef, which presents gentle slopes and broad crests for occu- 
pation by the home forces, and steep scarps to invaders from 
the east, provides a series of natural defences against an 
attack from the German frontier: but the defences were 




NTERMEDIATE DEPRESSIONS 

overcome in 1870 by the superior organization and prompt 
mobihzation of the Germans, who advanced rapidly across 
the Lorraine saddle and over the upland belts to Paris. Since 






Fig. 16. The Long Back Slope of an Upland Belt 

then the natural defences of the northeastern frontier have 
been reenforced by the construction of the chain of fortresses 
above-named — Belfort, Epinal, Toul, Verdun, Mezieres, 
Maubeuge — from the Vosges to the Ardennes. Hence in 
1914 the Germans, instead of again advancing from Lorraine, 
passed around the Ardennes, thereby deliberately violating 
the neutrality of Belgium, in order to attack France from the 
north, where most of the upland belts are wanting. There 
the defences, both natural and artificial, are weaker, the mining 
and industrial districts of the northern border were rich prizes, 
and the advance southward into the region north and east 



48 



EASTERN HALF OF THE PARIS BASIN 



of Paris was along the grain of the rehef rather than across it. 
It is for this reason that the three more southern fortresses of 
Toul, Epinal, and Belfort have not been attacked in the 
present war, that the northern (unfinished) fortresses of Mau- 
beuge and Mezieres were overwhelmed, and that the inter- 
mediate fortress of Verdun, where the fighting front crosses 




Fig. 17. Relation of Structure and Form in Upland Belts 

the line of fortresses, has been the scene of a prolonged 
struggle. 

22. Varied Features of Different Upland Belts. Before proceeding 
to the description of the individual features in the eastern half of 
the Paris basin and its extension over the saddles of Langres and Lor- 
raine, a brief statement may be made of the various ways in which 
the upland belts or cuestas depart from the simple forms of Figs. 15 
and 16. The stronger and thicker the cuesta-making strata, the 
higher and bolder is the cuesta, as on the left in Fig. 14. A thin 
cuesta-maker between heavy bodies of weaker strata will make a 
low cuesta or upland, as in the middle of the figure. The weaker and 
thicker the intermediate strata, the broader, lower, and smoother is 



VARIATIONS OF UPLAND BELTS 49 

the inter-cuesta depression, as to the left of the middle. If a thin 
body of weak strata lies between two strong cuesta-makers, the 
resulting depression, as near the right end of the figure, will be nar- 
row and shallow, so that it as well as the upland belts will be trenched 
by stream valleys; upland belts thus related may be described as 
overlapping, in contrast to the belts in the middle and near the left 
end of the figure, which may be described as wide-spaced. 

The greater the slant of the strata, the more direct the front of the 
upland belt, until when the strata are steep or vertical, as in the fore- 
ground of Fig. 17, the belt becomes a narrow ridge: on the other 
hand, the less the slant of the determining strata, the more irregular 
the upland front, until when the strata lie horizontal as in the back- 
ground of Fig. 17, the upland becomes a table-land with an irregular 
margin and detached outliers, as is the case in the first upland belt 
100 k. northeast of Paris. Variations in the resistance, the thickness, 
or the slant of strata along their belt of outcrop therefore cause cor- 
responding variations in the form of the upland belts. 

The relation between river courses and upland belts is very 
varied. The simplest relation is that of a squarely transverse river, 
flowing with the slant of the cuesta-making strata, as in Figs. 15 
and 16; and such is the course of the historic Marne where it cuts 
a narrow gateway through the strong upland next east of Paris, the 
first of the series counting eastward to the Vosges, as will be again 
told in section 47. Gateways of this kind are of great importance 
as lines of travel: they can be strongly defended against invasion by 
fortifying the adjoining uplands. The Meuse, on the other hand, 
cuts off a long segment from the curved front of the fourth belt^ 
somewhat as in Fig. 18; the river enters obliquely from the south, 
runs behind the upland front as a chord passes behind its arc, and 
flows out obHquely to the north, as will be more fully described in 
section 37. Many of the uplands are much dissected by the ravines 
of small streams, so that they form belts of hills, rather than a 
continuous upland surface. 

Streams occasionally flow through an upland belt against the slant 
of the determining strata; several such streams cut trenches 
through the strong rampart of the fifth upland belt west of the 
Moselle as shown on the map, p. 69, and thus bring to that river 
the drainage of the broad lowland, known as the Woevre, which there 



50 



EASTERN HALF OF THE PARIS BASIN 



lies between the fifth and the fourth upland belts: one such stream 
heads at a point where the fourth upland is exceptionally narrow; 
and it is there that the Germans, advancing from Metz, pushed for- 
ward their front in a salient which overlaps the scarp of the fourth 
upland and includes St. Mihiel on the chord-valley of the Meuse, 
as will be stated more in detail in section 39. If the details pre- 
sented here and on the following pages seem complicated, let it be 




Fig. 18. An Upland Belt with a Detached Segment 

remembered that they are much simpler than the varied forms of 
nature. 

It may be noted that the upland belts or cuestas are not so easily 
recognized on a large-scale map as on the ground, for the downward 
view of a map shows the many valleys by which an upland and the 
adjoining depressions may be dissected, and therefore does not set 
forth the unity of the upland nearly so well as when it is seen in 
outdoor nature. But outdoor views of the uplands may also fail to 
reveal their true character if they are seen from the floors of the 
larger transverse valleys that are followed by the chief routes of 
travel; for if, as is often the case, the intermediate depressions as 
well as the uplands are trenched by the transverse valley that an 
observer follows, an upland seen from the bottom of such a valley 
may be regarded simply as a hill somewhat higher than its neighbors, 



LACK OF NAMES FOR UPLAND BELTS 51 

and the long continuity of its relief will not be recognized. It is in 
the almost horizontal views from hilltops, whence all the valleys 
but those in the foreground disappear, as in Fig. 15, that the con- 
tinuity of an upland belt is best perceived, especially if its front rises 
only 50 or 60 m. above an adjoining dissected depression. 

It would greatly facilitate the description of the upland belts if 
each one had a name for itself, but even the strongest of them vary 
so much in form and are cut across by so many valleys that their 
continuity has never been recognized in popular nomenclature. 
The habit followed by some geographers of designating the belts by 
the names of the geological formations to which their strata belong 
— as bathonien, bajocien, kimmeridgien, etc. — is unsatisfactory, 
because such names are technical and unfamiliar, and because atten- 
tion is thereby turned too much from their exterior form to their 
interior constitution. They might be named after the cities that lie 
upon or in front of them; thus the fifth could be called the Langres- 
Nancy-Metz cuesta; but such compound names are not convenient 
for frequent use. The device of numbering the belts eastward from 
Paris, as in Fig. 13, has at least the merit of simpHcity and of giving 
easy indication of their relative positions, but the numbers thus 
employed are not in current use in France. 

One reason for the lack of simple geographical names for the up- 
land belts is that many of them are so long that they pass from one 
ancient historical province or modern political division to another; 
and as the leading French students of geography have entered the 
subject from the historical rather than from the physiographic side, 
even they have not yet introduced generally accepted names for 
these striking features. Partial exception to this statement may be 
made for the third and shortest belt, which lies chiefly in the western 
part of the district of Argonne and which, being forested for much of 
its length, is known as the Forest of Argonne; but this name is not 
apphed to its northwesternmost extension. 



CHAPTER V 

THE VOSGES AND THE ADJOINING REGIONS 

23. The Highlands of the Vosges. The eastern side of the 
Paris basin is hmited by the Vosges (German^ Vogesen, or 
Wasgau Gebirge), a mountainous highland which should be 
considered, as shown in Fig. 19, in association with the similar 
highland of the Black Forest (German, Schwarzwald) , 45 k. 
farther east, beyond which a covering series of stratified for- 
mations slopes gently eastward toward the basin of the upper 
Danube and thus roughly corresponds to the series of covering 




Fig. 19. The Vosges Mountains, the Valley o 

strata which slopes westward from the Vosges into the Paris 
basin. Between the two upheaved highlands lies a sunken 
belt, trending north and south and forming the broad valley- 
lowland that is followed by the middle Rhine in the stretch 
from its narrow passage by Bale (German, Basel) between the 
Black Forest and the Jura mountains on the south, to its 
entrance into the narrow gorge through the Slate mountains, 
280 k. to the north. In consequence of this structural 
arrangement, both of the upheaved highlands have steep 
slopes toward the intermediate sunken area, and more gradual 
slopes toward the basins of overlapping strata. 

62 



REGION OF THE VOSGES 53 

The Vosges proper, consisting in great part of resistant 
crystalline rocks, increase in breadth from 30 k. in the north 
to 50 k. in the south, and measure about 110 k. in length along 
their north-south crest, where their height ranges from 1000 
to 1400 m. The highest point is the Ballon de Gueb wilier, 
1426 m. in altitude, near the southern end of the highland. 
The summits are usually rounded, dome-like masses, covered 
with forests for the most part, though the highest domes are 
treeless above 1300 m. ; but many valley heads, especially on 
the eastern slope, are steep and craggy. The broad crest of 
the highland is so little notched that no railroads cross it, 
though branch lines enter the valleys on either side. 

The crest of the Vosges is however traversed by several roads, 
which like the railroads follow the valley bottoms into the moun- 
tains as far as the ascent is not too steep, but which on reaching the 




P3 Rhine, and the Black Forest 

steeper valley heads continue alone in zigzag detours to accomplish 
their object of rising to the crest without strong gradients. Thus 
a railway and a highway enter the eastern slope from Schlestadt by 
the oblique valley of the Liepvrette; the railway ends at the village 
of Ste. Marie aux Mines (380 m. ? ; German, Markirch) ; the 
highway continues in zigzags to a pass (780 m.) near the mid- 
length of the range, and descends similarly to the upper valley of the 
Meurthe where it meets a railway at St. Die (356 m.) ; the direct 
distance between thetwo railways is 16 k. Similarly a railway and a 
highway ascend from Molsheim by the oblique valley of the Bruche 
in the northern Vosges to the valley head; there the highway con- 
tinues over a notch and descends to a railway on a headwater 
branch of the Meurthe northeast of St. Die, but on the French slope 



54 



THE VOSGES AND ALSACE 




Fig. 20. The Vosges and the Valley of the Rhine 



ALSACE 55 

the road is not so well constructed. Again in the southern Vosges, a 
railway and a highway from Mulhouse ascend the valley of the Thur; 
the highway zigzags over a pass and meets a railway on a head branch 
of the Moselle. Next to the southwest one of the finest of the moun- 
tain roads lies altogether in French territory as it passes near an angle 
of the frontier from a railway at the head of the Moselle southward 
over a shoulder of the Ballon d'Alsace (1244 m.) near the southern 
end of the range, and, descending, joins a railway leading to the 
fortress of Belfort: its repeated zigzags lace across a convex spur on 
the north side of the pass, and around a concave ravine head on the 
south side. 

The steep eastern slope of the Vosges, deeply dissected by many 
narrow valleys and ravines, is heavily forested. Except near the 
southern end of the range, the larger valleys trend obliquely north- 
eastward; the spurs between them are elaborately carved by side 
ravines. A knob (German, Kopf) at the end of a spur (936 m.) on 
the eastern slope of the Vosges near their southern end and 20 k. east 
of the crest line, named Hartmannswillerkopf (" the knob of Hart- 
mann's hamlet ") from a village at its base, has become notorious 
during the present war from being occupied by the French; it sur- 
mounts the plain by over 600 m. The broad lowland of the middle 
Rhine, east of the highland slope, measures 40 k. in width; near 
the highland base it is occupied by rolling hills of small relief at an 
altitude of 200 or 300 m., and farther east by a broad and flat river 
plain 150 or 200 m. in altitude. The western part of the plain 10 k. 
east of the highland base is drained northward by the 111, which 
rises in the Belfort depression south of the Vosges; 15 k. east of the 
111 is the Rhine, which formerly flowed in many tangled or braided 
channels, but which is now artificiafly restrained to a single channel 
of gentle curvature through much of its course: near the junction of 
the two sub-parallel rivers east of the northern end of the Vosges lies 
the famous city of Strasbourg (German, Strassburg; 178,891.) 

24. Alsace. The present boundary between France and 
Germany lies, as above noted, along the crest of the Vosges. 
All the eastern slope of the highland and the plain below 
it as far as ftie Rhine, from the Swiss boundary at B^le past 



56 THE VOSGES AND ADJOINING REGIONS 

Mulhouse (German, Mulhausen; 95,041) and Colmar and be- 
yond Strasbourg, formerly constituted the French province of 
Alsace. Since 1871 the province has been German territory 
under the name of Elsass. The people here habitually speak 
two languages, and most places have two names, one French, 
one German. In 1872, 45,000 of the inhabitants withdrew 
into France in order to avoid becoming German subjects: 
many more French citizens, equally loyal yet unable to move 
away, were constrained to change their nationality; but they 
are "frangais quand meme!'' 

25. The Uplands West of the Vosges. West of the Vosges 
crest line, the mountainous area has its greatest extension be- 
tween the upper Moselle and Meurthe, where the ridges (750- 
950 m.), mostly forested, are divided by a labyrinth of irregu- 
larly branching valleys, from 200 to 400 m. in depth. The 
main valleys of the Moselle and the Meurthe follow generally 
northwestward courses; their floors have a width of one or 
two kilometers; their descent is more gradual than that of the 
narrow, eastern valleys. Two lakes (Gerardmer, 631 m., 
Longemer, 716 m.) occur in branch valleys of the upper 
Moselle. St. Die lies on the Meurthe within the margin of the 
mountains; the strongly fortified city of Epinal is at the 
mountain margin 40 k. farther west on the Moselle. Beyond 
the mountains the relief diminishes to a more moderate 
measure as the crystalline rocks are irregularly overlapped by 
the lowest strata, the eighth and seventh belt-makers, of the 
Paris-basin series. 

The district which extends west of the Vosges to the sixth 
upland belt is occupied by the lowest sandstones and lime- 
stones of the Paris-basin series (Fig. 21). The basal member 
or eighth belt-maker is a resistant sandstone, which weathers 
to an infertile soil and is therefore generally forested. It is 



UPLANDS WEST OF THE VOSGES 57 

frequently strong enough to rise in high uplands or ridges 
(550-800 m.) along the mountain margin. It is followed on 
the northwest by the rolling uplands of the broad seventh belt 
(275-350 m.), composed chiefly of limestone strata which 
produce a fertile soil and are therefore generally cleared and 
cultivated. These strata are usually without distinct topo- 
graphic expression as a broad cuesta or unsymmetrical ridge; 
but in certain areas their edge determines a well defined 
east-facing scarp. Their rolling surface declines gently west- 
ward, and at distance of some 40 k. from the Vosges, they 
are overlapped by stronger limestones which rise in a well 





_,, 




9 


<?^^^^^ 


%??^^i 




fe=-^^^^^^^^^^SSS5S^^^ 


i^^^^0<^ 




^^^^^^^^fc 



Fig. 21. The Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth Belts West 
OF the Vosges 

marked scarp to the higher surface (350-400 m.) of the sixth 
upland belt, sometimes forested but more generally cleared. 

The general trend of the eighth and seventh belts hereabouts is 
from southwest to northeast : thus they enter well into France west 
of the southern Vosges, where they adjoin the saddle of the Langres 
plateau, as shown on the map, p. 69; while to the northeast of the 
frontier they extend far beyond the northern Vosges into Germany, 
where they form the Lorraine plateau and the Hardt, to be described 
in Chapter XIII. Within French territory, the two belts are cut 
almost squarely across by the valleys of the Meurthe and the 
Moselle, and they will therefore be described in three sections: the 
first, about 20 k. wide, from the frontier to the Meurthe valley; 
the second, about 30 k. wide, between the two valleys; the third, 
extending 60 k. southwest of the Moselle valley. 

In the section to the northeast of the Meurthe, the basal 
sandstones of the eighth belt are locally doubled, as above 



58 THE VOSGES AND ADJOINING REGIONS 

figured, in two mountainous, forested ridges. The first ridge, 
from 600 to 800 m. in altitude, is separated from the irregu- 
larly subdivided hills and mountains of the crystalline rocks 
on the southeast by the valley of the Rabodeau, and from the 
second ridge, which seldom exceeds 700 m. in altitude, by the 
valley of the Plaine river; both of these streams flow south- 
west to the Meurthe. To the northeast, beyond the frontier, 
the high sandstone hills flanking the Vosges are irregularly 
dissected by the headwaters of the Sarre. The sandstones are 
followed on the northwest by the overlying limestones, which 
form a lower rolling surface subdivided by the valleys of the 
Vezouse, the Sanon, and their branches, partly shown on the 
1:100,000 map, pages 60, 61. 

When regarded northeastward from favorable points of view, the 
general profile of the cleared hills which make up the rolling surface 
between the main valleys may be seen to rise toward the moun- 
tains, thus forming the seventh upland belt, and then fall off in a 
low scarp before the ascent of the first sandstone ridge is begun: but 
the scarp is so often cut back by many little valleys and ravines that 
its scalloped front has little continuity : these features are continued 
northeastward, beyond the frontier. If the rolling surface is followed 
northwestward, residual hills of the next overlying strata, mostly 
forested, are found along the divide between the Sanon and the 
Seille near the frontier, between the Sanon and Vezouse, and less 
distinctly between the Vezouse and the Meurthe; then beyond the 
junction of the Sanon and the Meurthe a well defined scarp rises to 
the broad surface (350-400 m.) of the sixth upland belt, which will 
be followed from south to north in a later paragraph. The streams 
by which this section is limited and divided have the habit, like many 
others in this region, of flowing in a very irregular course on the flat 
floor of a winding valley, one or two k. wide; a reason for this 
behavior will be suggested in the account of the Meuse, in section 38. 

It was in this district, between the Vosges on the southeast and 
the sixth upland belt on the northwest, that the German army in 
August, 1914, crossed the upper Meurthe and advanced half way 



VALLEYS OF THE MEURTHE AND THE MOSELLE 59 

over the hills to the upper Moselle; they were later forced back 
almost to the frontier, northeast of the Meurthe, where the fighting 
front has since remained with little change. Ruined villages, such 
as Vitrimont on the Meurthe below Luneville and Gerb^viller on 
the Mortagne, mark the temporarily invaded area. 

The chief city of this area is Luneville, on the widened 
valley floor (230 m.) at the confluence of the Vezouse and the 
Meurthe. The Eastern railway, coming from Paris and 
Nancy, ascends the Meurthe valley to this point and then 
turns up the Vezouse toward the frontier. Branch lines run 
up other valleys to the Vosges, and up the Moselle to Epinal 
and beyond. The valleys are also followed by branching 
highways. An important canal, crossing the Meuse and the 
Moselle on its way from the Marne to the Rhine, turns from 
the valley of the Meurthe and ascends that of the Sanon to 
the frontier, the irregular course of which is described in 
section 27. 

In the section between the Meurthe and the Moselle, which 
is unequally divided by the intermediate valley of the Mor- 
tagne, the basal sandstones, slanting gently northwest, assume 
the form of a well defined upland belt (700 m.) somewhat 
southeast of the line connecting St. Die and Epinal, with a 
strong frontal scarp toward the Vosges; but instead of being 
continuous, the upland is irregularly incised by many narrow 
valleys, and the scarp is worn into a frayed-out pattern. 
These details of form are beautifully displayed in the elabo- 
rately dissected upland area west of St. Die, which bears the 
Mortagne and other forests; yet complicated as the area is 
when seen in plan, all its parts are merely the dissevered 
elements of a cuesta-like upland; and the recognition of this 
fact greatly facilitates the appreciation of many details that 
might otherwise seem unrelated. 



60 THE VOSGES AND ADJOINING REGIONS 




THE FRONTIER ON THE SIXTH UPLAND BELT 61 




SEVENTH Upland Belt 



62 THE VOSGES AND ADJOINING REGIONS 

The following limestone belt repeats the features above described, 
except that more of its uplands are forested. The tabular limestone 
surface of the sixth upland belt (350 m.) is well developed, though 
of moderate extent, in the narrowed space where the Meurthe and 
the Moselle approach each other. The chief place in this section is 
the fortified city of Epinal (340 m.), commanding the narrows of the 
elsewhere open Moselle valley where it cuts through the slanting 
uplands of the basal sandstones. 

The third section, southwest of the Moselle, is much more exten- 
sive than the other two : it is characterized by the great extension of 
the basal sandstones which here lie nearly horizontal and stretch 
30 k. southwestward in a tabular upland, cut into separate portions 
by the narrow valleys of the Coney, Semouse, and Lanterne, head- 
waters of the Saone. A noticeable feature of this section is a range 
of hills, known as the Monts Faucilles, which divide the side branches 
of the Moselle southwest of Epinal from the headwaters of the 
Saone; the hills are merely remnants of the next strata overlying the 
sandstones, which are naturally enough not yet completely worn 
away along the divide. 

Southwest of the sandstone area the overlying limestones, the 
seventh belt counting eastward from Paris — see the map on p. 69 
— rise in a well defined, east-facing scarp west of the uppermost 
Saone, and the upland surface beyond declines gently westward to 
the head branches of the Meuse; hence a cuesta-like upland is here 
formed with much more distinct expression than in the same 
limestone belt farther northeast. 



26. The Sixth Upland Belt. The limestones of the sixth 
belt form a well-marked upland, 400 m. in altitude, with a dis- 
tinct east-facing scarp, cut into many scallops by transverse 
streams. Near its southern beginning, it forms the divide 
between western branches of the Saone and the head of the 
Marne; from 20 to 40 k. farther north it is obliquely cut 
through by several branches of the Meuse which rise on the 
back slope of the seventh upland belt. The longitudinal de- 
pressions which adjoin the upland on either side are not 



VALLEYS OF THE MOSELLE AND THE MEUSE 63 

smooth surfaces, but are incised by the valleys of the oblique 
streams, though to a less depth than that of the valleys 
through the upland. 

It was on the eastern slope of this upland south of the Meuse 
branches and on the Apance, a small branch of the upper Saone, that 
a super-Zeppelin, " L-49," was forced by five French aeroplanes to 
land during its return from a raid on England. It was capable of 
making 55 or 60 miles an hour, with a crew of 18 men, two machine 
guns, and two tons of bombs, and had reached a height of ^ miles 
over London, where the temperature was — 33° C. with a strong 
north wind. Some of the men had their hands frozen and were half 
stupefied with the cold. They were prevented from destroying the 
airship after landing by a sportsman, who happened upon them; 
the airship was thus captured intact and carefully studied by French 
experts- On the same date the frame of a second airship, set on fire 
by French guns, fell at St. Clement on the Meurthe above Lune- 
ville; and a third was destroyed by its crew after landing in the 
French Alps. 

Beyond the Meuse branches, the upland belt turns north- 
eastward and the upland is obliquely traversed by the 
north-flowing Madon, which joins the Moselle above Toul; 
at the entrance of this oblique valley hes Mirecourt: several 
detached outliers rise southeast of the upland scarp toward 
Epinal. After resuming its northward course, the upland 
scarp is skirted on the east for 15 k. by the Moselle; when 
this river approaches within 12 k. of the Meurthe, both rivers 
flow northwestward through oblique gateways in the upland 
belt. A fine view is obtained from the crest of the upland 
between the two rivers far southeastward, up the two valleys 
and across the uplands between them to the Vosges, 50 k. 
distant: in the opposite direction, the strong scarp of the 
fifth upland belt is seen beyond the depression that separates 
the two uplands. North of the Meurthe, the sixth upland 
belt advances northeastward and broadens in somewhat 



64 THE VOSGES AND ADJOINING REGIONS 

tabular form: there it is cut through by the Seille, a small 
stream of very winding course, which marks the frontier: the 
further northward extension of the upland will be described 

in chapter XIII. 

• 
It is noticeable that the rivers hereabouts do not follow the 
depression between the sixth and fifth uplands, but cross it and the 
adjoining uplands with little regard to the relief of the surface. On 
the other hand the depression, although by no means a level surface, 
is continuous enough to be followed by Hnes of communication and 
occupied by villages, both of which avoid the uplands. The river 
gateways or gaps through the upland belts open easy lines of travel 
between the neighboring depressions. 

27. The Frontier from the Sixth Upland Belt to the Vosges. 
The frontier dividing Lothringen from Lorraine, as established 
in 1871, ascends the incised course of the meandering Seille 
southeastward through the sixth upland belt, but departs 
from that small stream on reaching the more open country 
of the seventh belt and runs across hills and valleys to the 
Vosges. After crossing the upper Sanon it runs, as in Fig. 22, 
about halfway between the headwaters of the Vezouse and the 
Sarre, traverses the double sandstone ridges at the head of 
the Plaine, and then rises to the mountain crest. Through 
the middle of this distance of 60 k., the boundary line is not 
signalized by any striking topographic features: the lime- 
stone country on one side of it is much like that on the other. 
The adjoining German area will be described in section 68. 

It was across the open upland of the seventh belt and thence 
westward through gaps in the sixth belt within the 70 k. space 
between the fortresses of Epinal and Toul, that French military 
writers during the period following the war of 1870 thought the 
next German attack would be made, and trulj^ enough a strong 
advance was there attempted, as above noted : but the main line 
of the German invasion in 1914 was through neutral Belgium. 



CHAPTER VI 

FROM THE PLATEAU OF LANGRES TO LORRAINE 

28. The Plateau of Langres. The saddle where the strata of 
the Paris basin arch over the high depression between the still 
higher masses of the Vosges on the northeast and the Morvan 
on the southwest is known in part as the plateau of Langres, 
from an old fortified town that occupies one of its spurs : the 
saddle constitutes the northwestern half of the old province 
of Bourgogne or Burgundy. It is composed of resistant 
limestones that ascend gradually from the northwest, arch 
over the saddle at an altitude of 550 m., and descend south- 
eastward in a rapid and well dissected slope, known as la 
Cote d'Or, famous for its " Burgundy " vineyards. 

The slope ends in an escarpment, 100 or 150 m. in height, made 
ragged by the notches of many small streams, beyond which the 
broad lowland of the Saone basin — the plain of la Bresse — is 
outspread. 

The southwestern part of the long and gradual ascent of the 
plateau is trenched and divided into several long strips by the sub- 
parallel headwaters of the Arman^on, a branch of the Seine system 
which, more directly than any other, lies in the up-stream prolonga- 
tion of the trunk river between Rouen and Paris. Here from time 
immemorial travel and traffic between the southern valley of the 
Rhone — ''Provence" — and northern France have crossed the 
plateau : a Roman highway, placed on one of the narrow plateau 
strips for safety from attack, is still traceable for 25 k.; a de- 
tached hili now known as Mt. Auxois (418 m.) at the end of one 
of the strips is the site of Alesia (" Ipsum erat oppidum Alesia in 
coUe summo, admodum edito loco, ut nisi obsidione expugnari non 
posse videretur"), a stronghold where Vercingetorix, who had 

65 



66 PLATEAU OF LANGRES TO LORRAINE 

gathered all the tribes of Gaul to his aid, was finally overcome by 
Caesar, B.C. 52. The ancient name is still preserved in Alise Ste. 
Reine, a village at the foot of the hill. The plateau is now crossed by 
a national road, a canal connecting the Seine and Rhone river sys- 
tems, and the main line of the " P. L. M." railway which, after 
ascending the Armangon valley near each other, follow different 
lines over the high ground, but which all come together again at the 
base of the Cote d'Or, where the city of Dijon (76,847) lies at a 
valley mouth. 

29. The Fifth Upland Belt: Southern Part. The fifth upland 
belt, maintained by a series of resistant limestones and shown 
in most of its curved length on the map, p. 69, is one of the 
most remarkable members of the upland series. Its southern 
part is divided into two steps, of which the eastern and lower 
one forms a bench below the higher or main member: but 
the two parts approach and coalesce farther north. Near the 
southern beginning of this complex belt, the crest of the main 
upland is sharply defined with a precipitous but irregular 
scarp, to the east of which the lower member or bench, the 
sixth upland belt and the seventh follow in regular order, but 
with very irregular pattern when seen in plan, as shown in 
Fig. 23. 

When it is remembered that access from Germany to the plain 
(la Bresse) of the Saone through the narrow and hilly gateway 
between the Vosges and the Jura is guarded by the strong fortress 
of Belfort, and that advance from the plain of the Saone over the 
plateau of Langres involves the ascent of the steep Cote d'Or or the 
traverse of the four benched uplands to the north of it, before the 
basin of Paris can be entered, it is clear that invasion of France from 
this side can not be easily accomplished. 

The ancient walled city of Langres, from which the adjoining 
plateau takes its name, stands on a sharp spur-end in the main scarp 
(470 m.) of the fifth belt, where it enjoys a broad eastward view 
across the bench and the lower belts, and commands the pass (400 m.) 



UPLAND BENCHES EAST OF LANGRES 



67 



between the headwaters of the Marne and the Saone. This city is 
one of the few in France situated on the crest of an upland belt; its 
importance is less now than formerly, for modern travel and traffic 
by road, canal, and railway pay little heed to the old-fashioned town, 
perched above the cliffs over the pass; its isolation combined 
domination with safety in the middle ages, but now turns to its 
disadvantage. 

The northwestern slope of the main member of the fifth belt is a 
forested and sparsely inhabited upland for some distance north of 
Langres, almost waterless because its determining limestones are 
pervious to rainfall: it is deeply incised by many northwestward 




Fig. 23. Upland Benches East of Langres 

valleys and ravines, and is known as la Montague to the villagers in 
the next following depression, which is there called la Vallee. 

Next north of Langres a road lies near the edge of the lower mem- 
ber or bench of the fifth belt, so as to avoid the valleys that are 
incised in its back slope by the headwaters of the Marne. This 
winding river, which here pursues a northwestw^ard course, cuts a 
valley gateway through the main body of the upland; the valley 
sides decrease in height as the river winds its way through the lower- 
ing back slope of the upland. A similar through-valley is cut by the 
Rognon, a branch of the Marne, which competes with the head of 
the Meuse for the drainage of the sixth upland hereabouts. 

30. The Fifth Upland Belt: Middle Part Beyond the 
Marne and 30 k. north of Langres, the two members of the 
fifth upland belt, which were 5 or 10 k. apart and of very irreg- 



68 PLATEAU OF LANGRES TO LORRAINE 

ular pattern near Langres, approach to within 2 k. of each 
other, and the general Hne of their double scarp becomes fairly 
direct: thus the belt assumes a simpler form. The sharp 
edge of the main scarp rises above the bench in a strong crest 
(480 m.), which retreats where valleys are cut through it and 
advances between them in pointed salients; but all its parts 
are systematically related as the dissevered members of a 
single upland belt. 

Between 40 and 70 k. north of the Marne breach by Langres, 
five neighboring eastern branches of the Meuse deserve mention. 
Several of them rise on the back slope of the seventh upland belt and 
cut through the sixth, both of these belts being well developed here- 
abouts; the streams, then entrenching their courses to a moderate 
depth across the depression between the sixth and fifth belts, cut 
close-set, oblique valleys through the fifth upland, thus dividing it 
into a number of separate masses (480 m.) of small area, the south- 
eastern scarp of each being skirted by its lower bench. Neuf- 
chateau lies here on the Meuse in the back slope of the fifth belt, 
as will be further stated in section 36. 

Outliers of the fifth-belt limestones surmount the frontal depres- 
sion by 150 m. in this district and provide excellent points of 
inspection, from which not only the variety of local features but 
also the essential continuity of the sixth and fifth upland belts 
on the east and west is clearly apparent, in spite of the repeated 
trenching that has dissevered their parts. Farther north, the scarp 
of the .fifth belt is deeply indented by frontal ravines, but the belt as 
a whole is not cut through in the 30 k. stretch beyond Neuf chateau. 

The Moselle cuts an important breach through the fifth 
upland belt, and 12 k. farther north the Meurthe enters 
obliquely into the upland; but this river, instead of flowing 
through the upland, merely cuts off a segment of its front, as 
is further stated below. The broad top (400 m.) of the upland 
north of the Moselle breach is covered with the Forest of 
Haye; its bold east-facing scarp, sharply indented by many 



UPLAND BELTS OF THE MEUSE AND MOSELLE 69 




Fig. 24. The Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Upland Belts 



70 



PLATEAU OF LANGRES TO LORRAINE 



ravines, is closely skirted by the frontal bench, here reduced 
to small breadth. The important city of Nancy (220 m.) lies 
beneath the bench near the oblique entrance of the Meurthe. 
Many small villages lie on the benched slope of the upland 




Fig. 25. The Meuse, the Moselle, and the Meurthe 

Abbreviations: L, Lun^ville; M, Metz; N, Nancy; S, St. Mihiel; T, Toul. 

front hereabouts, a little below the level where springs issue, 
as determined by the junction of the pervious overlying lime- 
stones with the impervious underlying marls. The hills 
of the upland north of the Meurthe are known as le Grand 



FOURTH, FIFTH, AND SIXTH UPLAND BELTS 71 

Couronne; they were held by the French against assaults 
directed against Nancy in the second month of the war, when 
large numbers of Germans — 40,000, it is said — were killed 
at the base of the hill slopes. Although unsuccessful in their 




IN THE Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Upland Belts 

main object, the enemy front has been maintained but a short 
distance away, and Nancy has been subject to bombardment 



ever smce. 



The repeated transverse dissection of the upland belt gives it an 
irregular, indeed a confused outline on the map, because the stream 



72 PLATEAU OF LANGRES TO LORRAINE 

courses are not geometrical in their arrangement; but if the sepa- 
rated parts of the upland are carefully examined the systematic 
control of their unsymmetrical, east-west profiles by the moderate 
slant of their strata becomes apparent, as is shown in the bird's-eye 
diagram, pp. 70, 71. Each part of the upland resembles a slanting 
bastion, highest at the apex of its advancing and scalloped scarp, 
regularly declining along its indented flanks; the successive bastions 
are of different size and pattern in plan, according to the arrange- 
ment of the transverse streams; but in profile they are all much 
alike. The irregularly detached hills beyond the Meurthe are of 
more tabular form, having rather steep slopes on all sides. 

3L The Elbow of the Moselle. The course of the main rivers in 
this district is peculiar: the Moselle formerly flowed northwestward 
not only through the sixth and the fifth upland belts, as it does 
today, but into the fourth also, where it joined the Meuse. At that 
time as now the north-flowing Meurthe entered into the fifth upland 
belt, but instead of running through it, followed a deeply incised 
valley a few kilometers west of the upland front and then ran out 
again. A much dissected segment of the upland, 40 k. in length, was 
thus cut off from the main mass. Farther on, the river, leaving the 
upland intact, pursued its course northward and northeastward to 
the Rhine. Where the two rivers entered the fifth belt, the Meurthe 
was the more deeply incised in the frontal depression by some 50 m. ; 
and as a result one of its branches, heading to the southwest in the 
depression between the fifth and fourth uplands, slowly extended its 
length by retrogressive erosion in the weak strata there occurring 
and thus in time tapped the Moselle, diverted it from the Meuse 
which was thereby much diminished in volume, and led it to join the 
Meurthe which was thereby as much increased. 

At the point of diversion, the Moselle, now narrowly entrenched 
below the broad floor of its former course, makes a sharp turn, 
known as an '^ elbow of capture "; there stands the fortified city of 
Toul. The former winding course of the Moselle, known as le Vol de 
VAne, through the fourth upland belt will be described below. These 
changes are all long prehistoric: had they happened during the 
course of human history, a single name, such as Meurthe, would 
undoubtedly have been applied to the whole length of the original 
tributary of the Rhine, and another name, such as Moselle, would 



THE FIFTH UPLAND BELT NEAR METZ 73 

have been given to the shorter river above the point of confluence to 
which it was led by capture. Unfortunately, rivers have not been 
named in view of their origin and evolution, but in an arbitrary and 
often unreasonable fashion: hence the name of the Moselle like 
its flowing current is now continued to the Rhine; and the name, 
Meurthe, is limited to the upper part of the aboriginal river. 

32. The Fifth Upland Belt: Northern Part. The segment of 
the fifth upland belt, set off as above noted from the main body 
by the valley of the Meurthe-Moselle, is widest at the south- 
ern end, where it is cut into several irregular tabular masses 
(400 m.), which advance eastward and surmount by 150 m. 
the gentle back slope of the lower sixth belt; and this belt 
also advances eastward in tabular form hereabouts. The 
northern part of the segment, Fig. 26, forms a hilly ridge only 
three k. wide between the incised frontal valley of the Seille 
on the east and the broader valley of the Moselle; the ridge is 
breached 20 k. from its northern end, where the Seille flows 
nearest to its eastern base. The villages of Ste. Genevieve 
(326 m.) and Mousson (380 m.) occupy the hilltops on the 
opposite sides of the breach; below the latter is the town of 
Pont-a-Mousson, on both sides of the Moselle. The fortified 
city of Metz (68,598; in French, pronounced Mess; in Ger- 
man, Metz) borders the river north of the cut-off segment. 

The main body of the fifth upland back of the cut-off segment, like 
the whole body of the upland farther north, is more or less indented 
by the ravines of a number of short east-flowing streams, and is cut 
throughout by two longer streams which lead the drainage of the 
broad depression on the west through winding northeastward gorges, 
deepening as the upland rises, to the MoseUe. One of the longer 
streams, named the Rupt de Mad, will be further referred to below 
in connection with the fourth upland belt; the more northern 
stream, the Orne, has a length of 50 k. and joins the Moselle not far 
north of Metz; its narrow, deepening, and singularly serpentine 



74 PLATEAU OF LANGRES TO LORRAINE 




Fig. 26. The Fifth Upland Belt and the 



THE MOSELLE SOUTH OF METZ 



75 




Valley of the Moselle, South op Metz 



76 PLATEAU OF LANGRES TO LORRAINE 



gorge crosses the frontier in the long western slope of the upland 
belt. These obHque gorges are too narrow and sinuous to be fol- 
lowed by main roads, several of which cross over the upland; but 
each gorge is followed by a railway and a secondary road. 

33. The Frontier on the Fifth Upland Belt. The irregular and 
apparently arbitrary course of the frontier with respect to 
topographic features is strikingly illustrated in this district. 
It follows the winding course of the Seille through the tabular 
eastern extension of the sixth upland belt, as already stated; 
then as that stream turns north along the narrow part of the 
third upland segment, the frontier passes obliquely over the 
segment, crosses the open valley of the Moselle north of 
Pont-a-Mousson, traverses the crest of the main body of the 
fifth upland by a most rambling course, and turns northward 
on its western slope, as shown in part on the detailed maps, 
pp. 74, 75, and 78, 79, and also in Fig. 28. 

The fortified city of Metz, German since 1871, Hes as above noted 
on the Moselle (170 m.) just north of its exit from the incised valley; 
here the upland (350 m.) is strong and intact; the map on pages 78 
and 79 shows its cleared upper surface, with its scarp, irregularly 
frayed out and forest covered, from the summits of which an exten- 
sive eastward view over the Lorraine plateau may be gained; the 
map also shows the low bench fronting the scarp base and the open 
floor of the Moselle valley, where an ancient Roman road still in use, 
a highway, and a railway are laid between the bench and the river. 
The river, after receiving the Seille at the northern end of the de- 
tached segment of the upland, flows 30 k. northward near the base 
of the bold upland scarp, before bending to the northeast to flow 
through the sixth upland belt, as will be further described in the 
account of the Lorraine plateau in chapter XIII. Thionville (Ger- 
man, Diedenhofen) lies at the bend (148 m.); the fifth upland belt 
(400 m.) here presents a scarp with the unusual height of 250 m. 

The frontier hereabouts, although truly irregular, is not 
arbitrarily located : its course over the fifth upland belt was 



1 



IRON ORES OF THE FIFTH UPLAND BELT 77 

determined after the Franco-Prussian war of 1870 by the 
advice of a German geologist, who pointed out that this 
upland is rich in valuable iron ore (minette), of especial 
importance in the Bessemer process of steel making, and that 
by shifting the frontier from the base of the upland scarp, 
where it was at first proposed, a few kilometers to the west 
a large share of the ore beds would be transferred to Ger- 
many. For this reason the frontier, after crossing the Moselle 
between Pont-a-Mousson and Metz and ascending the upland 
scarp, runs irregularly northward on the western slope of the 
upland; from the mines there located a great share of Ger- 
many's iron supply was drawn before 1914. 

Many smelting furnaces have been erected in the Moselle valley, 
the coal used there being brought from the Sarre basin in the Lor- 
raine plateau to the east, to be described in a later section. To 
France was left only a lower and more western part of the iron-ore 
beds, known as the Briey area, from a town situated on the western 
slope of the upland. The entire iron-ore field of this area also has 
been in possession of Germany since August, 1914, and has made it 
possible, even with war in progress, to double her previous enormous 
production of iron and steel. 

34. The Woevre Lowland. The lowland between the fifth 
and fourth upland belts, for 80 k. north of the elbow of the 
Moselle at Toul, expands to a notable breadth because the 
belts are here wide-spaced, and receives a special name, le 
Woevre. The maximum width of the lowland is 15 k.; its 
gently rolling surface has an altitude of about 230 m. ; many 
artificial ponds are held in its shallow valleys; extensive 
forests overspread its low hills: its central area is, as above 
noted, drained eastward through the fifth upland belt to the 
Moselle by the Rupt de Mad and the Orne. This lowland 
will be referred to again in connection with Verdun, in the 
fourth upland belt. 



78 PLATEAU OF LANGRES TO LORRAINE 




Fig. 27. The Fifth Upland Belt and the 



THE MOSELLE NORTH OF METZ 79 




Valley of the Moselle, North of Metz 



80 PLATEAU OF LANGRES TO LORRAINE 

35. The Fifth and Sixth Upland Belts: Northernmost Parts. 
About 10 k. north of Thionville the fifth upland belt turns 
westward and so continues for nearly 150 k., as shown on the 
outline maps, p. B9 and p. 153. Some 30 k. farther north 
the sixth belt, returning from its northeastward detour into 
Germany (see section 71), also trends westward along the 
slope that gradually ascends northward to the Ardennes high- 
land. Both belts are much scalloped by the notches of south- 
flowing streams: the back or southward slope of the belts 
is usually cleared. Within and north of the sixth belt (the 
seventh belt is not represented) the rising slope of the Ar- 
dennes is deeply incised by the remarkably serpentine valley 
of the Semois. The Luxembourg frontier, which is here inter- 
posed for 8 k. between German Lorraine and Belgium, 
and the Belgian frontier for a small part of its length lie on the 
fifth upland, as shown in Fig. 28. 

The sixth upland belt hereabouts is not limited on its exterior 
or northern side by a well defined scarp, but merges into the ascend- 
ing slope of the Ardennes; its broadly arched hills differ from those 
farther north more in their calcareous soil than in their form. 

The continuity of the fifth upland in its westward course is 
broken by several streams, the largest being the Chiers which, 
coming from the northeast, swings around an irregular course 
convex to the south and thus runs into and out of the upland, 
cutting off a 40-k. segment of its front, as shown in Fig. 28 
in much simplified form. At the point of entrance, the stream 
is 140 m. beneath the upland crest (400 m.) ; here the fortified 
town of Longwy lies on the eastern point of the cut-off seg- 
ment and commands the approach of the Chiers valley from 

Abbreviations in Fig. 28 : A, Arlon; B, Briey; C, Charleville; D, Dun-sur-Meuse ; 
E, Etain; L, Luxembourg; M, Metz; N, Stenay; O, Montm^dy; S, Sedan; T, Thion- 
ville; V, Verdun; Y, Longwy; Z, M6ziSres. Frontier, dotted: Germany and Luxem- 
bourg in foreground, France and Belgium beyond. 



CONVERGENCE OF THE UPLAND BELTS 81 




28. Upland Belts South of the Ardennes, looking west 



82 PLATEAU OF LANGHES TO LORRAINE 

Luxembourg. The valley of the Chiers through the upland 
wanders irregularly; Montmedy lies on one of the valley-side 
spurs in the upland not far from the river exit. 

The back slope of the fifth upland belt, at its turn from a 
northward to a westward trend, north of the Briey iron-ore 
district, is drained by the Crusnes, which joins the Chiers at 
the southernmost point of its segment-cutting curve. The 
northern part of the Woevre is drained northwestward by the 
Othain and Loison to the Chiers; like the Chiers, all three of 
these branch streams cut narrow, winding valleys in the 
back slope of the upland. 

Farther west, the upland, much narrower than near Metz, is 
obliquely trenched by the Meuse (165 m.), flowing northwest; 
there Stenay and Mouzon lie between the hills of the upland 
(350 m. on east, 330 m. on southwest) : it thus appears that 
the Meuse, which flows obhquely inward through the fifth up- 
land belt between Langres and Neuf chateau, flows obliquely 
outward through it south of the Ardennes; the points of 
entrance and exit are about 180 k. apart. Evidently the 
northernmost part of this upland belt, reduced in width to 
about 10 k., has little continuity: nevertheless the form and 
the relative positions of its parts are best appreciated when 
they are recognized as belonging together although cut 
apart by traversing rivers. 

Mouzon is notable as marking the crossing place of an ancient 
Roman road, which holds an almost direct course over hill and dale, 
still followed for long stretches by secondary modern roads, between 
Rheims, 85 k. distant to the southwest, and Treves (German, Trier) 
on the Moselle, 110 k. distant to the east-northeast. After crossing 
the high crest of the fourth upland belt (336 m.), the road descends 
and traverses the lowland (here no longer called the Woevre) be- 
tween the fourth and fifth belts to Mouzon; it then passes over the 
fifth upland to the next lowland, where Carignan Ues at the crossing 



THE MEUSE AND THE CHIEHS 83 

of the Chiers; then along the sixth upland belt and away. Mouzon 
and Carignan are therefore good examples of ancient river-crossing 
towns, the general location of which is dependent upon the inter- 
section of an almost direct long-continued road with the rivers on its 
course, though the precise sites of crossing were probably influenced 
by suitable points for fording, at which bridges were later built as the 
towns grew in size. 

After its exit from the fifth upland belt, the Chiers flows 
westward on a broad flood plain through the lowland between 
the dissected scarp of the fifth belt on the south and the long 
back slope of the sixth belt on the north. Similarly the 
Meuse, after issuing from the fifth belt and receiving the 
Chiers, wanders on the same wide flood plain as it flows west- 
ward through the lowland. Sedan of fateful memory lie^ six 
k. below the junction of the two rivers. The heights of 
the fifth belt (346 m.), here much narrower than farther east, 
rise rapidly on the south; the cleared back slopes of the 
scalloped sixth belt (310 m.) ascend slowly on the north. 
Next west of Sedan, the Meuse makes a strong northward 
loop into the back slope of the sixth upland belt; farther west 
it makes a double loop, where the fortress of Mezieres and the 
city of Charleville lie near each other on the lowland (150 m.) 
with the river between them; then the river turns north, cuts 
through the sixth upland belt (280 m.), and enters a deep and 
winding gorge which it follows through the Ardennes. The 
two upland belts weaken and disappear a little farther west. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE REGION OF THE MEUSE 

36. The Fourth Upland Belt: Southern Part. The fourth 
upland belt has a greater length and in its middle a greater 
breadth than any other; it is recognizable, though imperfectly 
developed, along the northern border of the Central High- 
lands west of the broad valleys of the Loire and the Allier; 
while to the east of those valleys it is a well defined lineament, 
although cut apart by many streams, through all the 350 k. of 
its rounded northward course. Fig. 24, which leads it nearly to 
the Ardennes. Its limestones are less pure and their forms 
are less bold than those of the fifth belt; its cross profile as 
a whole is gracefully but unsymmetrically arched; its east- 
facing scarp is dehcately scalloped and its gray frontal slopes 
are generally cleared; its broad upland and long descending 
slope are usually carved into rounded hills, many of which are 
too dry for repaying cultivation and are therefore largely left 
to tree growth. 

Railways follow nearly all the many cross-valleys, of which the 
northernmost is that of the Marne, that traverse the southern part 
of the fourth upland belt; hence these railways, river-like, converge 
and unite on their way toward the metropolis at the center of the 
upland arcs; but here a circumferential railway also is seen, follow- 
ing the inter-upland depression between the fifth and fourth belts 
through the southern half of its long curve, because of the impor- 
tance given to it by its breadth, for the crests of the fifth and fourth 
belts are 40 k. apart in the south. The depression between them is 
moderately trenched across by all the rivers that traverse it. 

• 84 



SOUTHERN PART OF THE FOURTH UPLAND BELT 85 

As a result of the widening and eastward advance of the fourth 
upland, the two belts converge northeastward and the depression 
between them narrows until their crests are separated by only 14 k. 
where the five close-set eastern branches of the Meuse, mentioned 
in section 30 as trenching the fifth upland, unite with the main 
stream, which in its further northward course obliquely enters the 
fourth upland. Here, on the dissected back slope of the fifth 
belt, bordering the narrowed depression, Neufchateau (310 m.) is 
picturesquely situated, 20 m. above the level of the incised streams 
and 130 m. below the crest of the fourth upland which rises abruptly 
a short distance to the northwest. The features of this district are 
therefore typified by the trenched depression at the right end of the 
upper diagram, p. 47. 

Neufchateau is a center for a number of radiating railways and 
highways, which run in pairs along the circumferential depression 
between the fifth and fourth upland belts southwestward to Chau- 
mont-en-Bassigny on the Marne, and northeastward to Toul and 
Nancy; also up the Meuse, thus passing through the fifth upland 
belt and joining other roads by the Marne beneath Langres; and 
down the Meuse to the main line of the Eastern railway west of 
Toul; also southeastward up a branch of the Meuse on the way to 
Mirecourt in the sixth upland belt and beyond; and a railway crosses 
over the fourth belt west and northwest to the Ornain. 

37. The Fourth Upland Belt: Northern Part. Next north 
of Neufchateau the fourth upland belt attains its greatest 
breadth of 50 k. Here the valley of the Meuse obliquely 
enters the main body of the upland and 110 k. farther north 
flows obliquely out again, thus cutting off a long segment, 
which is known where its breadth is greatest as the Cdtes de 
Meuse. This part of the Meuse valley may therefore be 
likened to the chord of an arc, but it has nothing of the single- 
minded directness of a geometrical line : its general trend to 
the north-northwest is bent eastward to the mouth of the Val 
de TAne where the Moselle formerly flowed west, before it was 
diverted at the elbow of capture by Toul. All along this 



86 THE REGION OF THE MEUSE 

course the valley is gracefully serpentine, while the river has 
an even more elaborately sinuous course in the smooth mead- 
ows of the serpentine valley floor. Through all this distance 
the main body of the upland, west of the river, is not cut 
through by any stream. Indeed, from the oblique trench of 
the Marne, the main body of the upland is not transversely 
trenched for 170 k.; but near its farther end, where the crest, 
declining northwestward, has altitudes of about 300 m., it is 
traversed by a small stream, the Bar, as will be further stated 
below. 

The main body of the upland, has, nevertheless, a varied form. 
Its eastern slope is deeply indented by several short east-flowing 
branches of the Meuse, south and north of the former junction of the 
upper Moselle. The broadest part of its western slope, opposite the 
first half of the cut-off segment, is overlapped by a subordinate 
upland, with a greatly dissected front nearly 100 m. in height, 
shown in part on the detailed map, page 94; and the back slope of 
this upland, elaborately carved into rounded hiUs by many small 
streams, is obliquely incised for distances of 30 k. by the Ornain, a 
branch of the Marne, and by the Aire, a branch of the Aisne-Oise, 
both flowing northwest. Transverse transportation lines must there- 
fore either climb over or tunnel through the northern part of the 
fourth upland belt. 

The main line of the Eastern railway — Chemin de Fer de 
TEst — from Paris follows up the Marne and the Ornain to 
the western slope of the fourth upland belt, where Bar-le-Duc 
(181 m.) lies on the last named river; the railway continues 
for a short distance southeastward and then turns northeast- 
ward and crosses over the upland at an altitude of 325 m.; 
a broad view is gained from the treeless crest, before descent 
is made to the open valley of the Meuse (240 m.) ; this is fol- 
lowed southeastward to the Val de TAne, through which the 
railway turns east to Toul on the way to Nancy; other lines 



THE UNDERFIT MEUSE 87 

branch up the Meuse to Neuf chateau (section 36) and down 
the Meuse to Verdun and beyond. 

A secondary line and the Marne-Rhine canal continue up 
the Ornain farther than the main line of the Eastern railway, 
following a part of the river where it flows in a minutely 
sinuous channel along an incised meandering valley; the rail- 
way continues southeastward over the upland to Neuf- 
chateau : the canal turns eastward, tunnels 4 k. through the 
upland to a small valley of the eastern slope which it follows 
down to the Meuse; beyond that river the canal turns, like 
the main railway line, through the Val de I'Ane to Toul; 
thence down the new course of Moselle and up the Meurthe 
to Nancy on its farther way, which has been described in sec- 
tion 25. 

38. The Underfit Meuse. The uncertain, hesitating course of the 
Meuse through the flood-plain meadows of its meandering valley 
deserves further mention. It runs anywhere but around its valley 
curves; it is thus unlike the lower Seine, which swings vigorously 
around and fits closely into the large curves of its meandering val- 
ley through the chalk uplands of Normandy; and unlike the lower 
MoseUe, which in similarly well-ordered fashion fits the meanders of 
its narrow valley, deeply incised in the Slate-mountain highlands on 
the way to the Rhine. The elaborately sinuous Meuse may there- 
fore be described as " underfit,'' in the sense of being incompetent 
to follow its vaUey curves; it thus illustrates a curious habit, widely 
prevalent among the smaUer rivers of northern France, such as the 
Vezouse, the upper Meurthe, the Chiers, and the Ornain, above 
mentioned, and the Aisne, the Oise, and the Somme, to be described 
below. 

It has been suggested that the underfit habit of these rivers is due 
to loss of river volume by slow underflow in the deep alluvium — 
gravels, sands, and silts — of the valley floor; thus it is implied 
that at an earlier stage of development, before the alluvium of the 
flood plain was deposited, the visible river carried the total drainage 
of its basin in its channel, and was for a time large and vigorous 



88 THE REGION OF THE MEUSE 

enough to cut out the curves of a freely meandering valley, into 
which it then necessarily fitted because they were its own product; 
but later, as alluvium began to accumulate on the rock-bed of the 
valley, the visible volume, flowing in the surface channel, was de- 
creased by the amount of creeping underflow in the alluvium; the 
deeper the alluvium became the more the visible river flow was thus 
diminished, until at the present stage of its development if is re- 
duced to so small a current that it is altogether incompetent to 
swing around the valley curves, which it had itself previously carved, 
as is clearly shown on the detailed maps, pp. 90 and 95. 

The Meuse may therefore be taken as the type of an underfit 
river; its course is so much more serpentine than that of the valley 
that it sometimes, as at points near St. Mihiel and Verdun on the 
detailed maps above noted, flows almost backwards towards its 
source, as if, with loss of volume, it had also lost the sense of direc- 
tion and knew not where to turn! The practical application of this 
explanation is that serpentine valley floors, on which "underfit" 
rivers wander irregularly, may be expected to have a deep alluvial 
deposit burying their rock bottom. 

39. St. Mihiel and Verdun. The upland segment which, 
cut off from the main, body of the fourth upland belt by the 
Meuse valley, forms the Cotes de Meuse, is breached at the 
first quarter of its 100 k. length by the winding Val de FAne, 
already described as connecting the elbow of the Moselle with 
the valley of the Meuse, and as marking the former path of 
one river to its confluence with the other: this dry valley 
today serves as a gap for highway, canal, and railway as above 
noted; the first crosses over one of its valley-side spurs under 
which the other two pass in tunnels. 

A little farther north the northeast-flowing Rupt de Mad, 
one of the branches of the Moselle, briefly mentioned in sec- 
tion 32 as trenching the fifth upland belt, has pushed its head 
so far westward across the Woevre lowland by retrogressive 
erosion as to excavate a bight or concave reentrant in the 



THE COTES DE MEUSE AND THE WOEVRE 89 

scarp of the Cotes de Meuse, and thus reduce them to their 
least width of three k., as shown in the lower part of the map, 
pp. 90, 91. Just here, moreover, two small west-flowing 
branches of the Mouse have cut their valleys ahnost through 
the narrowed Cotes. 

Hence it was here that the German forces early advanced 
westward from the fortress of Metz across the fifth upland 
belt and the Woevre lowland, and reached the Meuse in a 
salient between the fortresses of Toul on the southeast 
and of Verdun on the north; the apex of the salient is a little 
north of the narrowest part of the upland segment at mid- 
length of the Meuse valley-chord, and is marked by the town 
of St. Mihiel: there on a west-reaching spur that enters the 
second turn of an S-like pair of valley curves, a French strong- 
hold had been built upon the site of an ancient Roman camp, 
but unfortunately on the east side of the river; the Germans 
captured the stronghold and cut the railroad in the valley 
beneath. Thus defended on three sides by the natural val- 
ley-moat, they have held possession against all French attacks. 
Their object was plainly enough not merely the occupation of 
this point, of relatively small value in itself, but the isolation 
of Verdun, farther north in the Meuse valley, of which more 
is told below. 

North of the Rupt de Mad bight, the segment of the Cotes de 
Meuse (380 m.), partly forested, partly cleared, is high and continu- 
ous in the sense of not being cut through by any transverse valley, 
but it is carved into many rounded hills separated by deep ravines. 
The east-facing scarp of the segment is not so sharp crested as that 
of the fifth upland belt; nevertheless, it is a striking topographic 
feature. The view eastward from its promontories includes the 
whole breadth of the Woevre with patches of shining ponds, and the 
long western slope of the fifth upland. As is often the case elsewhere, 
so here the level of emerging springs on the lower slope of the scarp 



90 



THE REGION OF THE MEUSE 




Fig. 29. The Meandering Valley of the Meuse 



THE MEUSE AT ST. MIHIEL 91 




IN THE Fourth Upland Belt, near St. Mihiel 



92 THE REGION OF THE MEUSE 

determines the site of a series of ancient villages which have been 
there from time immemorial; the villagers are in large measure de- 
scended from a long Hne of local forefathers; their number changes 
slowly. Many of the villages have sous-les-Cotes appended to their 
name. In proud contrast to the humbler position of these lowly 
villages, Hattonchatel (-castle) occupies a commanding promontory 
of the segment crest, and recalls an era of barons lording it over 
peasants. 

The main western body of the upland belt hereabouts, west 
of the Meuse, is still a broad and hilly upland (320 m.), in 
spite of the loss of its higher frontal segment. The relief is so 
strong on both sides of the river that the upland villages often 
have names ending in -mont, as Haumont, Louvemont; some 
of those in the ravines have names ending in -court, as if to 
indicate their narrow enclosure by the hills, as Chattancourt, 
Avocourt, Landrecourt. 

The meandering habit of the Meuse valley through the hills results 
in systematic differences of length in the several lines of transporta- 
tion that follow it; the main highway makes short cuts over the 
valley-side spurs, and is, as usual in such valleys, the shortest line; 
the railway along one side of the flood plain, and the canal often 
along the other side, follow the valley curves; the river, twisting 
about on the flood plain, and occasionally even turning backward, is 
much the longest line of the four. 

Here in the chord-valley lies Verdun (204 m.), the fortified 
center of a ring of fortified hills. The railway that follows the 
winding valley of the Meuse is here crossed by an east-west 
line that rises and falls over uplands and lowlands; to the 
west it leads over the main body of the fourth upland and 
over the third and second uplands to Rheims; to the east, it 
passes over the detached segment of the fourth upland, 
across the Woevre lowland, and then dividing, runs through 
the fifth upland by two of its narrow transverse valleys. 



VERDUN 93 

Unfortunately all these railway lines have been controlled by 
the Germans since shortly after the beginning of the war. 

Although thus cut off from supplies by rail, Verdun has suc- 
cessfully resisted all assaults. Farther down stream, the 
valley and the hills on both sides of it, as well as most of the 
Woevre lowland on the east, were early occupied by the Ger- 
mans; but it has been impossible for them to make success- 
ful attack upon Verdun from the lowland, by reason of the 
natural defense offered by the strong scarp of the cuesta 
segment; the effort of the Germans to ascend a ravine in the 
scarp face, known by the name of the village, Vaud, at its 
mouth, cost them the sacrifice of thousands of lives. It is 
therefore from the north, where hills about as high as those 
crowned by the forts around Verdun are occupied by the 
enemy, that the strongest attacks have been made; but these 
attacks have been impeded by the deep side-valleys which 
divide the hills. 

Some of the hills have become notorious in the course of 
repeated attacks and repulses: Cote de Froide Terre (345 m.) 
is 4 k. north of Verdun; Douaumont (388 m.), a violently 
contested point, rises 9 k. to the northeast; le Mort Homme 
(295 m.) is 12 k. northwest of the city; near by on the west 
an advancing spur of the subordinate overlapping upland is 
known from its height as '' Hill 304." The digging of trenches 
and the blasting of "craters " by innumerable shells has in- 
flicted a long-lasting injury on the fields of the uplands, not 
only by making them uneven, but even more by mixing the 
surface soil with a great volume of unweathered rock frag- 
ments. The surface can be graded smooth again in a few 
years of peace, but it will require scores of years to restore its 
lost soils. 



94 



THE REGION OF THE MEUSE 




Fig. 30. The Meuse at Verdu; 



THE MEUSE AT VERDUN 




[N THE FOUKTH IJPLAND BeLT 



96 THE REGION OF THE MEUSE 

It is evidently because of the separation of Verdun by the main 
body of the fourth cuesta from the more open country farther west, 
that it has played so individual a part in the war. It withstood the 
first assault of the Germans in August, 1914; since their retreat 
from the Marne in September of that year, the attacks upon Verdun, 
especially the long-continued assaults of 1916, have been essentially 
independent of the campaign farther west. The defense of the 
fortress has been made doubly difficult since the Germans took 
St. Mihiel, as noted above, and thus prevented the bringing of sup- 
phes by rail along the valley floor from the south. To overcome this 
deprivation, thousands of motor trucks, running on schedule time, 
have been used to bring munitions over the upland from Bar-le- 
Duc on the Ornain, by a hilly road that crosses the incised valley of 
the upper Aire on the way. The dislodgment of the Germans from 
St. Mihiel and the reestablishment of railway communication along 
the Meuse valley would therefore greatly strengthen Verdun. 

It is worth noting that by a treaty made at Verdun in the year 
843 the vast empire of Charlemagne was divided among his succes- 
sors; thus for the first time did the region which we know as Ger- 
many have a ruler of its own; the beginning of German national life 
may be placed at this date. It is not improbable that the frantic 
efforts made by the Germans to capture Verdun have been prompted 
by pride awakened by this historical reminiscence : but the French 
have said, " They shall not pass." 

40. The Fourth Upland Belt: Northernmost Part. About 
30 k. beyond Verdun the underfit Meuse leaves its winding 
valley in the fourth upland belt and flows out upon the north- 
western extension of the frontal lowland, leaving the upland 
intact on the southwest. The lowland is here less than 10 k. 
in width and no longer bears the name of Woevre. Dun- 
sur-Meuse lies on the river at the exit from the upland, and 
Stenay is beyond the lowland some 12 k. farther on. 

The upland trends northwest, and rapidly losing breadth 
is cut through obliquely by the Bar, 30 k. northwest of the 
exit of the Meuse (see diagram, p. 81) ; it continues about as 



THE UNDERFIT BAR 97 

much farther (see map, p. 153), narrowing as it is crowded 
between the converging fifth and third uplands on either side, 
and then disappears under the overlapping chalk upland, as 
will be described in section 46. The ancient village of Stonne 
stands on the upland summit next east of the Bar valley, 
where the Roman road from Rheims to Treves holds its 
undeviating way over the upland belt. 

The Bar is a remarkable example of an underfit stream; its 
minutely sinuous course is about twice as long as the larger curves 
of its serpentine valley. Its minute sinuosity is doubtless due to 
diminution of volume, for which two reasons may be given: the 
Aire once continued its flow northward to the Bar before it was 
captured by a branch of the Aisne, as is further stated on p. 100; 
then the beheaded Bar, no longer able to transport all the detritus 
brought from the adjoining uplands by the side streams, laid down 
some of it on the valley floor, which was thereby built up or aggraded 
by a considerable thickness of alluvial deposits; and a further loss of 
surface volume was caused by underflow therein, as explained in 
section 38. 



CHAPTER VIII 

ARGONNE AND CHAMPAGNE 

41. The Third Upland Belt: its Southern Lowland Substitute. 
The third upland belt is peculiar in being well developed only 
in the northern part of its arc ; farther south the determining 
strata of this upland are thin or absent, and its place is taken 
by low rambling hills (180 m.) bearing large forests, or by 
a lowland (140 m.), 20 k. in width, between the long back 
slope of the fourth upland belt and the low front of the second, 
as shown in Fig. 32. The main branches of the Seine system 
cross the lowland in open flood plains. Indeed, in the space be- 
tween the Marne and the northward bow of its chief branch, 
the Ornain, several smaller streams, gradually converging 
westward, aid in transforming almost all that part of the 
lowland, over a north-south stretch of 20 k., into contiguous 
plains, on which the streams wander with little restraint. 

The larger towns and cities of this district avoid the lowland and 
occupy the main-stream valleys to the southeast or northwest. Thus 
Bar-sur-Seine, Bar-sur-Aube, St. Dizier on the Marne, and Bar-le- 
Duc on the Ornain are at the edge of or within the back slope of the 
fourth upland belt; while Troyes on the Seine and Vitry-le-Frangois 
on the Marne, regarding both of which more is said below, occupy 
reentrants in the low front of the second upland belt. Numerous 
roads and railways traverse the lowland in various directions; the 
most important railway is the main Eastern line, which crosses from 
Vitry-le-Frangois along the Ornain to Bar-le-Duc. 

42. The Forest of Argonne. To the north of the Ornain, a 
number of large ponds are held among the lowland hills, as is 

98 



• THE FOREST OF ARGONNE 99 

also the case farther south between the Marne and the Aube. 
The hills then increase in height and soon begin to assume a 
cuesta-like form; it is not, however, until 20 k. beyond the 
Ornain that the third upland belt, maintained by beds of argil- 
laceous sandstone, gains a well developed relief with a width 
of 15 k. between the Aire on the east and the Aisne on the 
west, both of which flow north-northwest in exceptionally well 
directed longitudinal courses. The upland begins rather 
abruptly, thus presenting a descent to the south; thereafter 
it has normal form, with a fairly strong slope falling off to the 
east, and a longer slope descending to the west; it thus con- 
tinues for 75 k. to the north-northwest, with stony, infertile 




Fig. 31. Section across the Forest of Argonne 

soil; much of its length is covered by the great forest of 
Argonne. The district of Argonne extends eastward and 
includes part of the back slope of the fourth upland. 

A characteristic profile across the southern part of this 
forested upland may be begun in the lowland (240 m.) on the 
east. Beneath it, the Aire has incised a meandering valley of 
small depth, near which Clermont-en-Argonne and in which 
Varennes-en-Argonne are the chief towns; the upland crest 
rises to a height of 308 m., whence a long westward descent 
(200-170 m.) leads to the next lowland (150 m.), before 
reaching which, however, one must cross the longitudinal 
valley of the Biesme which splits the upland for some 20 k., 
and the meandering valley of the Aisne (140 m.); the latter 
is an underfit river in a meandering valley near the base of 
the slope. Ste. Menehould is the chief town in this part of 



100 ARGONNE AND CHAMPAGNE 

the Aisne valley. A transverse railway, coming from Rheims, 
passes Ste. Menehould, crosses the split upland to Clermont- 
en-Argonne, and then traverses the main mass of the fifth 
upland belt to Verdun. 

At mid-length of the forested belt, the upland is cut 
square across by the valley of the Aire, which there leaves the 
longitudinal lowland east of the cuesta and turns to a trans- 
verse course; Grand Pre lies close to the elbow where the 
turn is made. The following part of the lowland is drained 
northward by the Bar, an extremely underfit stream, the lower 
course of which follows, as above noted, a meandering valley 
of large pattern through the fourth and fifth upland belts. 

It has been supposed with good reason that the underfit Bar, flow- 
ing in a relatively high-level valley (160 m.), represents the dimin- 
ished or " beheaded " lower course of the former high-level Aire 
(180-200 m.) when it continued northward to the Meuse, before its 
diversion to the Aisne in the lower western lowland (120 m.) ; hence 
the bend of the Aire at Grand Pre may be regarded as an elbow of 
capture, like that of the Moselle at Toul; and the incision of the 
Aire valley (140 m.) may be explained as a consequence of the trans- 
fer of its allegiance from the higher levels of the Meuse system to the 
lower levels of the Aisne-Oise-Seine system; but the valley of the 
little Aire at the Grand-Pre elbow of capture is much wider than that 
of the larger Moselle at Toul; hence the capture of the Aire by a 
branch of the Aisne should be regarded as more ancient than that of 
the upper Moselle by a branch of the aboriginal Meurthe. 

It is worth noting that the Aisne below the point where the Aire 
has been added to its volume, and where it therefore might expect- 
ably show the vigorous habit of an " overfit " river, more competent 
than ever to flow vigorously around its valley curves, is nevertheless 
strikingly underfit; hence loss of volume by percolation in flood- 
plain alluvium, as above suggested, is a plausible explanation of its 
now enfeebled behavior. 

Vouzier (100 m.) fies in the Aisne valley below the confluence of 
the Aire. Not far beyond that town and 23 k. below the confluence 



DIVERSION OF THE AIRE TO THE AISNE 101 

of the Aire, the Aisne turns westward; its further course will be 
described in a later section. Opposite this turn, the third upland 
belt, here trending northwest, is almost cut through by a small 
branch stream, the cross valley of which is ascended by a canal which 
connects the Seine-Oise-Aishe river system with that of the Meuse; 
the canal makes a short-cut path through a spur-stem of the Bar 
valley near its junction with the Meuse. A modern lane follows the 
ancient Roman road, above described as connecting Rheims and 
Treves, over the hills of the third upland belt (240 m.) next south of 
the cross valley just mentioned. Beyond the cross valley, the lowland 
in front of the upland narrows and disappears, presumably because 
its determining weak strata give out; the third upland thereupon 
almost merges with the fourth, as already stated. 

43. The Second Upland Belt, Southern Part: The Forest of 
Othe. The second upland belt, formed of chalk strata, is a 
low and much scalloped bench (190 m.) rising gently with 
gracefully curved profile from the northwestern side of the 
broad lowland (140 m.) that south of the Marne replaces the 
third upland belt; but southwest of the Seine the bench is 
dwarfed by a higher upland of cuesta form (280 m.), covered 
by the forest of Othe, which rises with a strong frontal slope, 
deeply scored by steep ravines, a few kilometers further north- 
west. This high upland is maintained by a body of sandstone 
strata, which singularly enough do not extend northeast of the 
Seine, and which lose topographic value southwestward of the 
Yonne; but between these limiting rivers the upland that 
they form is a dominating feature. 

44. The Second Upland Belt and the Champagne. North of 
the Forest of Othe the second or chalk upland, as it may be 
called, although of well defined form, is so low that it does 
not strongly separate the broad lowlands on its two sides. A 
large part of this extensive region of small relief, including 
most of the broad lowland where the third upland is wanting, 



102 



ARGONNE AND CHAMPAGNE 

Charleville 




_^,.;vv... -y^ MllleblMiijESn, 

Mezieres/^ "■ ' ' " U 1 1 l"i">. 

P Sedan' 



FiQ. 32. The First, Second, and Third Upland Belts 



THE CHAMPAGNE 108 

the low second upland, which bears many small patches of 
woodland, as far as the Aisne, and a long stretch of the follow- 
ing lowland of sandy and clayey strata which fronts the strong 
scarp of the first upland belt, is known as la Champagne, or 
'* the open country." 

Of this area, the broad eastern lowland as far north as the 
Forest of Argonne (third upland belt), and the narrower 
northward extension of this lowland between the Forest of 
Argonne and the chalk upland, are characterized by many 
streams, and by moist, deep-soiled fields and numerous 
villages; these parts are therefore united under the name la 
Champagne humide, or the moist Champagne. The western 
part, including the low chalk upland and the following low- 
land of few streams and dry soils, where villages and culti- 
vated fields are limited to the wide-spaced valleys, has 
received the unflattering name of la Champagne pouilleuse, 
which may be called the dry Champagne: it is this drier 
western area that is now to be especially considered ; and to 
it, rather than to the moister eastern area, the name Cham- 
pagne usually applies. 

The southwesternmost extension of the dry Champagne lies in the 
lowland between the long back slope of the Forest of Othe and the 
strong scarp of the first upland belt, where the Seine, having re- 
ceived the Aube, flows 60 k. west-southwest and receives the Yonne 
before resuming its northwest course and passing through the first 
upland to Paris. From this beginning the belt of low or moderate 
relief, widening by the addition of the low chalk upland belt north of 
the Seine, sweeps around an arc of more than 90° and over a distance 
of 250 k., from the Yonne on a southeastern radius of the Paris basin 
to beyond the Aisne, which limits the Champagne district, and as 
far as the Oise on a north-northeastern radius; the undulating low- 
land surface continues west of the Oise into northernmost France, as 
will be described in section 52. This belt of open country, includ- 
ing the low chalk upland on the east along with the lower lowland of 



104 ARGONNE AND CHAMPAGNE 

sands and clays to which the chalk upland gently declines on the west, 
is much more extensive than any other physiographic area of north- 
eastern France. For convenience of description it may be divided 
into sectors by the transverse rivers; the sector beyond the Oise will 
be treated on later pages. 

45. The Dry Champagne from the Seine to the Aisne. The 
Seine flows through the second or chalk upland belt next 
north of the Forest of Othe in a broad and squarely transverse 
valley, on the floor of which lies Troyes (55,486), the largest , 
city between Paris and Dijon. It is from the extensive deal- 
ings in the ancient fairs of this commercial city that English- 
speaking people have acquired the so-called Troy weight, in 
which 12 ounces make a pound. Beyond the open breach of 
the Seine, the chalk upland continues its generally treeless 
surface for 160 k.; yet low as it is only three rivers, the 
Aube, the Marne, and the Aisne, traverse it in all this distance. 
At the entrance to the obliquely transverse valley of the 
Marne lies Vitry-le-Frangois, one of the most southern points 
reached by the German army in its first advance. The low- 
land of the moist Champagne (140-150 m.) to the east of the 
chalk upland, unusually broad through the long 100 k. 
stretch where the third upland belt is wanting, is much nar- 
rowed, as above noted, after the rise of that upland in the 
Forest of Argonne farther north; the narrowed part of the 
lowland is, singularly enough, not followed by a longitudinal 
stream, for it is in the back slope of the third upland adjoining 
on the east that the underfit Aisne pursues the incised mean- 
dering valley described in section 42. 

The frontal scarp of the chalk upland is elaborately carved 
by the close-set ravines of many short, east-flowing streams, 
the branches of which head two or three k. back in the upland; 
its generally treeless spurs are unlike those of any other up- 



THE SCARP OF THE CHALK UPLAND 105 

land belt in the series from the Vosges to Paris. Villages lie in 
the ravine mouths or beneath the spur ends, where a water 
supply is obtainable; but they are more abundant on the 
better watered and well cultivated lowland farther east, in its 




33. The Ragged Scarp of the Low Chalk Upland 



narrowed northern extension parallel to the Aisne, as well as 
farther south where it is broad. The chalk strata that consti- 
tute the second upland belt (200 m.) are so pervious to water 
that the thin soil over the flat upland crest is unusually dry; 
hence villages here are few and far between: even the valley 
heads of the back slope are waterless. Not until the slope 
declines some 40 or 50 m., on the western side of the faintly 



106 ARGONNE AND CHAMPAGNE 

convex upland crest, do the shallow valleys bear streams; 
and not until after the streams begin are villages found also. 
The roads of the upland are surfaced with flints. Thus to the 
easily recognized flint-bearing chalk of its maintaining strata 
and to its well individualized though low relief, the second 
upland belt adds the characteristic of a thin-soiled, dry, 
almost uninhabited upland, the driest part of la Cham- 
pagne pouilleuse, between the moist and fertile lowland on the 
east and the broader but less fertile lowland, partly occupied 
by pine forests, on the west. 

North of the Aube, which curves to the west to join the 
Seine, the broad and gently undulating surface of the dry 
Champagne continues with a width of 40 or 50 k. for some 60 
or 70 k. before it is obliquely crossed by the shallow valley of 
the Marne, from the marshy flood plain of which much peat 
has been dug out. Chalons-sur-Marne, an important military 
station, lies on the right side of the valley, where the eastward 
rise from the lowland to the back slope of the second upland 
belt may be said to begin. Epernay lies on the left side of the 
Marne in a reentrant opened by that river in the front of the 
first upland belt. Through this part of the Champagne in 
particular, the faintness of the relief is shown by the long 
distances over which highways and railways run in straight 
courses. 

Then follows a northward stretch of some 60 k. where, between the 
Marne and the Aisne, several small streams rise in shallow valleys 
among the woodland patches on the gentle back slope of the chalk 
upland and cross the lowland northwestward to the Aisne. Here the 
battle front has lain for three years, trending from the southern part 
of the Forest of Argonne west-northwest to the Aisne where it enters 
the first upland belt. The district has been the scene of severe fight- 
ing, with moderate northward gains for the French. The shallow 



THE HILLS EAST OF RHEIMS 107 

valleys of the Vesle and the Suippe in the rolHng surface are of less 
strategic value than several residual hills in the center of the area 
between these streams, on which the Germans entrenched their 
forces after retreating from the Marne. The hills are composed of 
strata overlying the chalk; the highest of them (267 m.), eight k. 
east of Rheims, may be named from the village of Berru on its 
eastern slope. Twelve k. farther on other hills (257 m.) rise west of 
the village of Moronvilliers. Their possession has been desperately 
contested. Tunnels driven through the hills gave the Germans pro- 
tection in passing from their camps on the sheltered northern slope 
to the trenches on the exposed southern slope. When the hills were 
captured in the spring of 1917 by the French, after heavy artillery 
firing by which the tunnel mouths were broken down and obstructed, 
hundreds of German soldiers were found suffocated in the tunnels. 
The location of the hills is shown in the diagram on pages 112, 113. 
In the western part of this division of the Champagne north of the 
Marne and beyond a strong eastward saHent of the first upland belt, 
lies the famous cathedral city of Rheims (French, Reims; the final s 
is pronounced) on the the Vesle, a small branch of the Aisne. Since 
the retreat from the Marne, the German line has been held not far 
northeast of the city, which has thus been exposed to intermittent 
bombardment for over three years. The ancient origin of this city is 
attested by the number of Roman roads that radiate from it: one of 
them, already mentioned as leading to Treves, crosses the plain 
northeastward in a remarkably direct course. 

46. The Lowlands from the Aisne to the Oise. The Aisne, 
turning west from its longitudinal course in the back slope of 
the third upland belt, crosses the next narrow lowland, the low 
chalk upland — Rethel lies here in the transverse valley — 
and the lowland plain beyond, and then enters the plateau 
which constitutes the northern extension of the first up- 
land, as will be explained below. In its course west of the 
chalk-upland crest, the river flows in a very sinuous channel 
through a wide and often marshy flood plain. To the north of 



108 ARGONNE AND CHAMPAGNE 

the Aisne (see maps, pp. 102 and 153) the remaining portion of 
the undulating southwestward slope from the second or chalk 
upland to the adjoining lowland forms the northernmost sec- 
tor of the broad belt of small relief that began at the Seine. 
The belt here extends beyond the limits of the Champagne 
district and reaches the Oise. The drainage of the area is 
accomplished by the west-flowing Souche, Hurtaut, Brune, 
and Villepion, all small streams that unite in the Serre and 
thus reach the Oise, which in this upper part of its course has, 
like the Aisne above mentioned, a winding channel in a 
marshy flood plain. 

The southwestern and lower part of this northernmost sector, near 
the group of plateau segments that here represent the first upland 
belt, the smallest and northernmost member of which is crowned by 
Laon, is so low and flat that it is drained by artificial canals. The 
northeastern part of the sector, rising gradually with the northward 
ascent of the chalk formation, has deeper valleys and therefore a 
stronger relief than the corresponding area in the Champagne; its 
many broadly rounded upland hills rise among a labyrinth of val- 
leys, with neither height nor depth enough to make movement diffi- 
cult in time of peace, yet with such variety of form as to give in war 
much advantage to well chosen lines of defence and to impose cor- 
responding disadvantage on the lines of attack. 

The northward extension of the undulating uplands is peculiar. 
For a short distance north of the Aisne, they fall off eastward, as 
heretofore, in a scarp of moderate height which descends to the nar- 
row lowland already described, and beyond the lowland a moderate 
ascent leads up the back slope of the weakening third upland; but 
farther north the scarp disappears and the chalk upland successively 
overlaps the lowered ends of the third, the fourth, and the fifth 
upland belts (see map, p. 153), and farther west it wraps around the 
westward slope of the Ardennes into Belgium. Thus the strong 
rampart-like scarps of the several upland belts, which farther south- 
east faced the Lorraine plateau, fade away in this northern district; 
hence here, after the repulse of the allied forces in northern France 



LOWLANDS FROM THE AISNE TO THE OISE 109 

in August, 1914, the German army, hurrying through the Ardennes 
highlands by the gorge of the Meuse and passing around the low 
western descent of the highlands by Charleroi and Mons in Belgium, 
had a wide district of moderate relief before them, across which they 
advanced rapidly far southward into the Champagne, and for a less 
distance over the high ground of the first upland belt, to which we 
now turn. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE FIRST UPLAND BELT 

47. The Scarp of the Upland facing the Champagne Lowland. 
The member of the series of upland belts nearest Paris is main- 
tained by beds of impure limestone overlying the weaker 
sands and clays, which are worn down in the lowland of the 
Champagne on the east. Through the middle of its arc the 
upland has a strongly developed east-facing scarp, 150 m. or 
more in height, a rather broad upland (240-280 m.), and a 
long westward slope toward Paris. Its beginning may be 
said to be in the uplands of the Forest of Fontainebleau, not 
far southwest of the transverse valley of the Seine. The up- 
land gains stronger relief to the northeast of this valley, where 
it is known as la Brie, as far as the deeper and more mean- 
dering valley of the Marne, in the open entrance to which 
lies Epernay, with Chateau-Thierry in its narrowed middle 
part, and Meaux near its exit to the lower ground near Paris. 
The main line of the Eastern railway follows this valley. The 
lowland on the west has been described in chapter III. 

The upland of la Brie is cut through about two-thirds of the 
way from the Seine to the Marne by the Petit Morin, the 
source of which lies in an extensive marsh, le Marais de 
St. Gond, on the lowland next east of the upland scarp. 
Several streams, of which the largest is the Grand Morin, a 
short distance south of its more deeply incised little brother, 
rise on the upland and cut valleys in its back slope. Beneath 
a notch in the scarp at the head of the Grand Morin lies 

110 



ESCARPMENT WEST OF THE CHAMPAGNE 111 

Sezanne on the adjoining lowland; a secondary line of the 
Eastern railway ascends the Grand Morin valley and passes 
through the notch to the lowland. It was on the slanting 
upland just north of the Petit Morin valley, that Napoleon, 
shortly before his exile to Elba in 1814, defeated the Prussians 
in three battles at Montmerail, Champaubert, and Eloges on 
three successive days. 

The escarpment of the Brie upland is known as the Falaise (sea 
cliff) de rile de France (lie de France being the name of an ancient 
province, centering in Paris), thus recalling the obsolete view that 
cliffs of this kind were, like the cliffs of Normandy, the work of sea 
waves, as was thought before an understanding was reached of their 
origin by the differential weathering of strong and weak strata. The 
fact is simply that the underlying weak strata, worn down on the east 
to lowland forms, slowly sap and force back the scarp of the harder 
overlying strata; while the overlying strata, resisting with all their 
strength the enforced retreat, stand forth in scarped promontories 
and spurs. All the sunlit slopes of the scarp and the northern side 
of the Marne valley are occupied by vineyards from which the 
famous vin de Champagne is produced; it is stored in great cellars 
excavated in the weaker sandy strata near the scarp base. 

The finest promontory of the upland scarp is the already 
mentioned strong salient, the Montague de Reims, next north 
of the Marne; its eastward-rising extremity (280 m.) is 
naturally the highest point in the whole length of the scarp; 
its forested back slope is drained northwestward by a little 
stream, the Ardre, to the Vesle, a tributary of the Aisne. The 
promontory is tunneled by the railway from Epernay to 
Rheims. 

The segment of the upland front, almost detached by the 
valley of the Ardre, has an irregular margin, thus fore- 
shadowing the still more irregular margins of the segments 
north of the Vesle and the Aisne. 



112 



ARGONNE AND CHAMPAGNE 




Fig. 34. The Courses of the Marne and the Aisne across 



Explanation of abbreviations: A, ChAlons-sur-Marne ; B, Bar-le-Duc; C, Com- 
pidgne; E, Epernay; F, La F^re; H, Chateau-Thierry; L, Laon; M, Ste. Menehould; 



UPLAND BELTS ADJOINING CHAMPAGNE 113 




THE Champagne and theough the Uplands Northeast of Paris 



N, Noyon; O, Fdre Champenoise ; R, Rheims; S, Soissons; T, Rethel; V, Verdun; 
X, Meauz; Y, Vitry-le-Francois; Z, Sfizanne. 



114 THE FIRST UPLAND BELT 

Not far north of the Marne valley the back slope of the 
upland changes from a western to a southern slant; here it is 
drained by the Ourcq, which joins the Marne above Meaux. 
Farther west, the upland, known as Valois and already de- 
scribed in section 17, is limited by the valley of the Oise, as 
will be further told in section 52. 

48. The Battle of the Marne. When the German army made 
its great advance from the north of France in August, 1914, the 
farthest progress was over the uplands of Valois and Brie, 
where the front finally stretched from Meaux on the Marne 
southeastward along the southern side of the Grand Morin 
valley, and across the open lowland of the Champagne on the 
line from Fere Champenoise to Vitry-le-Frangois. Three 
valleys in the upland — those of the Marne, the Petit Morin, 
and the Grand Morin — which had impeded the southward 
progress of the Germans, now hampered the bringing of sup- 
plies from their rear, and might become dangerous obstacles in 
a forced retreat. 

It was when this condition was reached that the French 
under Joffre made their famous stand in the Battle of the 
Marne and began to press the Germans back. But in the 
forced retirement which followed, the same upland valleys 
that had impeded the advance of the Germans delayed the 
advance of the pursuers; and the attempt made by French 
forces, advancing from Paris, to push eastward north of the 
Marne and fall upon the German flank was delayed at 
the valley of the Ourcq. The retreat over the uplands left 
the invaders in an untenable position on the Champagne, and 
a concentrated attack by the French beyond the impassable 
marsh of St. Gond, which served as a natural barrier for a 
moderate distance forward from the upland scarp, compelled 



I 



THE BATTLE OF THE MARNE 115 

the German army on the plain to withdraw from its hazardous 
isolation. 

The northern side of the Marne valley would have been a 
favorable line for the Germans to hold, had there been time 
to assemble their forces upon it, but the pursuit was so 
ardent that this proved impossible; and moreover the right 
flank was there exposed to attack on the uplands of Valois. 
The retreat was therefore not arrested until the valley of the 
Aisne, in the uplands farther north, and the hills on the Cham- 
pagne east of Rheims were reached. The positions there 
taken were well chosen, if one may judge by the long subse- 
quent period during which they were held with small change. 

49. The Tablelands north of the Aisne. The northern part of 
the first upland belt is cut through by the east-west valley of 
the Aisne, midway in which Soissons is situated. The cuesta- 
like upland here undergoes the change of form that such fea- 
tures suffer, as illustrated on page 48, when the dip of the 
determining strata decreases and becomes almost horizontal. 
The upland belt or cuesta, with a scarp on one side and a long 
slope on the other, thus becomes a plateau, with a flat upland 
surface and scarps on all sides, as shown in the bird's-eye 
diagram, pp. 116, 117. The change is foreshadowed in the 
plateau-like segment (200 m., see Fig. 34) of the gently slant- 
ing upland included, with scarped and indented margins on all 
sides, between the Vesle and the Aisne, northwest of Rheims; 
and also farther west, on the south side of the Aisne valley in 
the neighborhood of Soissons, where the upland margin 
(140 m.) has lost the comparatively direct course that char- 
acterizes well-defined upland belts, and become irregularly 
lobate, after the fashion of dissected plateaus. North of the 
Aisne valley the transformation is complete; here instead of 



116 



THE FIRST UPLAND BELT 



presenting a frontal scarp, an upland, and a back slope, the 
continuation of the first upland is now seen in several sep- 
arate plateau segments varying little in altitude (140-180 m.), 




Fig. 35. Diagram of the Valley of the 

with strongly indented margins that fall off on all sides in 
steep scarps and long lower slopes. 

The first of these segments stands between the nearly 
parallel valleys of the Aisne and the Ailette, a small branch 
of the Oise; it measures 60 k. in length east and west, and 
near its western end is about 12 k. in width; it narrows east- 



UPLAND SEGMENTS NORTH OF THE AISNE 117 

ward and Craonne lies on the slope below its slender ex- 
tremity. A canal passes under a narrowed part of the plateau 
by a tunnel excavated in the weak strata underlying the lime- 




AlSNE, THE ChEMIN DES DamES, AND LaON 

stone beds that form the upland, and thus connects the Aisne 
and the upper Oise. The Gise flows south beyond the broader 
western end of the plateau segment; Conipiegne lies on the 
east side of this river near the confluence of the Aisne. The 
margin of the long plateau segment or tableland is frayed out, 
especially on the southern side, in many spine-like spurs 



118 THE FIRST UPLAND BELT 




Fig. 36. The Valley op the Aisne, and the 



THE CHEMIN DES DAMES 



119 




Plateau Segment Beabing the Chemin des Dames 



120 THE FIRST UPLAND BELT 

between as many encroaching, roundheaded reentrants. A 
road running northward from Soissons to Laon crosses over 
the narrowed middle of the plateau segment between two 
reentrants; a branch road runs along the level upland in the 
eastern half of the segment, avoiding the reentrants on either 
side : this is the famous Chemin des Dames, shown in Fig. 35 
and in more detail in Fig. 36. It was in this district that 
Napoleon was at last overcome in 1814, shortly after his three 
victories on the upland over the Petit Morin; the downfall 
of the First Empire and his exile to Elba followed. 

North of the Ailette valley, the breadth of which is much 
greater than might be expected for so small a stream, two 
smaller plateau segments or little tablelands are separated by 
an open depression; they have elaborately frayed-out mar- 
gins; the western and larger one (220 m.) is mostly covered by 
the forests of St. Gobain and Coucy (Fig. 34). Next north of 
the depression between the two isolated segments is a small 
outlying hill, crowned with the walled city of Laon. Two 
more small detachments of the upland rise west of the Oise; 
Noyon lies between them. North of Laon, the extension of 
the northernmost sector of the broad Champagne belt 
stretches westward beyond the Oise, as will be further de- 
scribed in section 52. 

In this district, much more easily than farther south where the 
first upland belt is developed as a cuesta, one may recognize that the 
controlling strata, now divided into detached plateau segments, were 
originally continuous and that the strata then extended with slowly 
increasing altitude far eastward and northward over the adjoining 
lowland; one may, indeed, if he pause here long enough to consider 
the relation of the brief present and the long past, come to understand 
that the removal of the extended strata and the disseverment of 
their remaining plateau segments was accomplished, not by any con- 
vulsion of nature, nor yet by the hurried processes of overwhelming 



UPLAND BELTS AND TABLELANDS 



121 



floods, but by the quiet perseverance of the slow processes of weather- 
ing and washing, working unendingly just as they are working today: 
they include the incision of valleys by streams, the gradual disinte- 
gration of the plateau-making strata exposed on the valley sides, the 
unceasing but very deliberate creep and the occasional more rapid 
wash of the disintegrated detritus down hill to the streams, and its 
intermittent transportation along their channels to the sea. 

The inevitable result of these processes is the slow reduction of the 
plateau segments to less and less area, and the corresponding in- 
crease in the breadth of the intervening valleys. South of Soissons 
the valleys are comparatively narrow, and the plateau areas are 
large; the valleys of the Aisne and the Ailette are more broadly 
opened, and the plateau segments are small and isolated tablelands; 




Fig. 37. Wasting Tablelands reduced to Lowlands 



farther north, the valleys become wide lowlands, and the tablelands 
are reduced to still smaller dimensions, like the hill on which Laon 
stands; farther north still, where the plateau-making strata rose 
gradually to greater altitudes and were therefore more exposed to 
degradation by the sapping of the weak underlying strata, no 
tablelands now remain and the lowland is continuous. 

50. Contrasts of Upland Belts and Tablelands. A difference between 
upland belts or cuestas of gently inclined strata and plateau seg- 
ments of horizontal strata, of importance with respect to the excava- 
tion of trenches in a " war of positions,'^ is seen in the unsymmetrical 
cross-section of cuestas, Fig. 14, and the symmetrical cross-sections 
of plateau segments, Fig. 37; or to put it in another way, in the 
unsymmetrical valleys that separate adjacent cuesta-uplands, and 
the symmetrical valleys that separate adjacent plateau segments or 
tablelands. The two sides of an inter-cuesta valley or depression are 
of unlike slopes and are underlaid with unlike strata: an example 
of this kind already treated is the depression between the back 



122 THE FIRST UPLAND BELT 

slope of the sandstones that maintain the third upland belt in the 
Forest of Argonne on the east and the low frontal scarp of the second 
or chalk upland belt on the west. 

On the other hand, the Aisne valley, between the long plateau 
segment that carries the Chemin des Dames on the north and the 
ragged border of the Valois upland on the south, is of the same struc- 
ture on its two sides. The battle front lay in this valley for nearly 
three years, and while the northern side was in possession of the 
Germans, the French on the southern side could learn from experi- 
ence in their own trenches and dugouts all the peculiarities of the 
enemy's position, so far as they were dependent on rock structure. 
Likewise the two sides of the long plateau segment between the 
valleys of the Aisne and the Ailette are of the same structure : hence, 
when the French, in the spring of 1917, drove the Germans up the 
southern side of the segment, as is detailed below, they knew that the 
weak sandstones which had been trenched in the lower slopes and 
the stronger limestones of the capping bluffs over which they had 
ascended from the Aisne, would be repeated in reversed .order when 
they descended the northern slope to the Ailette, as they did a few 
months later; and that the same features would be encountered again 
when the smaller segments, lying farther north, come to be attacked. 

51. The Aisne Front. The position taken by the Germans 
after the battle of the Marne ran from the southern part of 
the forest of Argonne — the third upland belt — obliquely over 
the second or chalk upland belt and across the Champagne 
lowland northeast of Rheims to the Aisne; then down the 
valley of the Aisne almost to Soissons, where the line crossed 
obliquely over the plateau segment next north and traversed 
the Oise between Compiegne and Noyon. The French cap- 
tured the middle part of the slope on the south side of the 
plateau segment near Soissons in September, 1914, but could 
not hold it and were forced back across the river. Not until 
two and a half years later was the German front along the 
Aisne pushed definitively northward. In March, 1917, when 
an important retirement of the Germans was made farther 



THE AISNE FRONT 123 

north (see section 54), they abandoned the broad western 
end of the long plateau segment and withdrew up the Oise; 
Noyon was thus liberated, and Soissons, which had for more 
than two years suffered bombardment, enjoyed comparative 
quiet again and the restoration of train service to Paris. A 
month later, on April 16 and 17, an important movement was 
made along the valley of the Aisne east of the confluence of the 
Vesle: the French had been entrenched for about 30 months on 
the lower slopes of the upland next south of the river, while 
the Germans had occupied the slopes at the base of the long 
plateau segment next north of the river, through the villages 
of Vailly and Chavonne, shown on the map, pp. 118, 119. 

The Germans were sheltered in well prepared dugouts 
during a preliminary bombardment by the French; when the 
shells ceased falling and the hidden Germans emerged with 
their machine guns to repel the expected assault, the up-hill 
charge of the French was so rapid and vigorous that thou- 
sands of the trench defenders hastily surrendered, and the 
reserves hurriedly fled to the upland crest. The village of 
Craonne, on the slope below the limestone bluff at the slender 
eastern extremity of the plateau segment, was captured in 
ruins on May 15; the narrow terminal part of the segment, 
curiously enough called le plateau de Calif ornie, was taken the 
next day as well as a stretch of the upland farther west, where 
the road from Soissons to Laon crosses it and where Laffaux 
mill stands west of the fork of the Chemin des Dames; on 
the following days greater lengths of the Chemin des Dames 
were gained: but so stubborn was the resistance on the 
plateau that several months were there spent in attacks 
and counterattacks and not until the autumn of 1917 were 
the Germans forced to retreat down the northern slope and 
retire across the broad valley floor of the Ailette toward Laon. 



1 



CHAPTER X 

THE REGION BETWEEN THE UPPER OISE AND 
THE SOMME 

52. General Features of the Region. If a radius trending 
northeastward from Paris through the upper Oise be turned 
until it runs northward through Amiens on the Somme, the 
100 k. of its outer length, between 70 and 170 k. from the Paris 
center, will sweep over a sector of rolling surface, mapped on 
p. 134, partly a lowland of sands and clays (80 to 100 m.) 
partly an upland of chalk (120 to 160 m.) which constitutes 
the western continuation of the lowland and upland sector 
already described between the Aisne and the Oise. It is 
abundantly incised by open and irregularly branching valleys 
from 25 to 50 m. in depth, shown in detail in Fig. 38. The 
region therefore has what may be called a quilted surface, 
inasmuch as the inter-valley areas, which rise in broadly 
rounded hills, are rather uniformly convex, so that when 
many of them are viewed from the center of any one, they all 
unite in a nearly level skyline; while the valleys into which 
the convex areas gradually descend are comparatively nar- 
row, like the seams by which a quilt is furrowed. Only the 
larger streams have well developed flood plains, usually less 
than a kilometer across; their valleys are like double seams. 

The highest elevations commonly occur along the broadly arched 
divides between the headwaters of neighboring river systems, of 
which the most important separates the Escaut on the north and the 
Oise and Somme on the south, and trends roughly east and west. 
The elevations along the divides are too low and too rambling prop- 

124 



UPLANDS WEST OF THE UPPER OISE 125 

erly to deserve the name of ridge, but as our language has no better 
word for them, that name is commonly employed. Distinguishing 
landmarks are almost wanting; the landscape repeats itself with 
small change from place to place. It is only in the southeastern part 
of the lowland area (80 or 90 m.) west of the middle Oise next above 
the confluence of the Aisne, that tabular hills surmount the lowland; 
they are small outlying segments of the plateau of the Aisne-Ailette 
area and are capped with the same limestone (calcaire grossier); 
similar but larger tabular hills occur farther down the Oise, as 
described in section 18. Elsewhere the capping limestones, which 
once spread far over the region, are completely removed; even the 
next lower strata of sands and clays have but a moderate extension 
west of the Oise, and beyond them the still lower flint-bearing chalk 
formation is laid bare at the beginning of its wide extension in north- 
western France. 

Conformably to the general structure of the Paris basin, the 
more resistant chalk strata hereabouts rise very slowly to the 
northeast, north, and northwest from beneath the weaker 
sandy and clayey strata, and thereupon the lowlands are 
succeeded by slowly rising uplands. Chalk is a rock of moder- 
ate hardness, easily pervious to water; hence deep wells are 
needed on the uplands to reach a water supply. The soil 
resulting from its decomposition is a reddish clay, usually of 
moderate depth, charged with flints; it represents the insolu- 
ble parts of the rock after the chalk is removed by solution. 
The clay soil is peculiar having sudden variations of depth, 
as if the chalk were more soluble or solution had been more 
active at one point than at another. It is, however, chiefly 
on the slopes and valley sides that the clay soil forms the sur- 
face; the broad hill crests are usually coated over with a fine 
and fertile loam, easily trenched, and very quickly converted 
into mud in wet weather. 

Woodland areas, comparatively small hereabouts, are now 
desolated. The main roads, formerly bordered by evenly 



126 THE UPPER OlSE AND THE SOMME 




FiQ. 38. The Upland about St. 



ST. QUENTIN AND THE UPPER OISE 127 




QUENTIN AND THE IJPPER OlSE 



128 THE UPPER OISE AND THE SOMME 

spaced trees, often having closely trimmed trunks and a tuft 
of branches at the top, are now bare. As elsewhere in France, 
pastures and cultivated fields, abutting directly upon the 
roads, occupy nearly all the surface; the open landscape is 
therefore characterized by many straight-line strips and 
patches, varying delicately in color according to their crops. 
Little or no space is given to hedges, walls, or fences; for- 
merly, grazing cattle were picketed and flocks of sheep were 
restrained from wandering by shepherd dogs. But now, as 
around Verdun, the country is laid waste; the digging of 
trenches and the blasting of shell-craters has done a lasting 
injury to the fields by mixing the humus-bearing surface soil 
with the subsoil and the underlying rock; occasional unex- 
ploded shells, buried in the ground, may make plowing dan- 
gerous. It will be many years before the fertility of these 
devastated areas is fully regained. 

The relief of the surface is generally so moderate that the main 
roads not infrequently run on direct courses for distances of 5 or 10 k. 
Some of them follow ancient Roman roads, and on these the long 
established villages are not infrequently located; but the routes 
nationales of modern construction are commonly laid on lines that 
serve best to connect the distant larger towns and cities, and there- 
fore leave many villages to one side or the other without turning to 
enter them; these villages are therefore served by local roads. 
Hence troops advancing along the old Roman roads find more fre- 
quent shelter in villages than if the advance is made along the new 
routes. The railways, having to respond more closely to the form of 
the surface, are somewhat sinuous. 

53. Rivers and Cities. The chief streams of the region are, 
in the north, the headwaters of the Escaut, and of its western 
branches, the Scarpe and the Sensee; on the west the upper 
Somme. The Oise forming the eastern border of the region, 
and the Sambre farther north, receive no important tributaries 



RIVERS AND CITIES 129 

from the area here considered. The larger streams wander 
in underfit fashion on flat and marshy flood plains, from a 
half to one and a half kilometers in width; for as already ex- 
plained in the case of the Meuse a considerable part of the 
drainage creeps slowly through the alluvium of the flood 
plain as an '^ underflow/' and the visible river therefore does 
not represent all the run-off of the rainfall. Below Amiens 
and therefore outside of the area here considered, the Somme 
valley is unusually rectilinear; above Amiens it is remarkably 
sinuous for 25 k.; here the small river wanders very irregu- 
larly as an underfit stream on the low and marshy valley floor. 
The upper Oise has a similarly irregular course through its 
flood plain, but its valley is relatively straight, as shown on 
the detailed map, page 127. The other valleys do not present 
peculiar features. 

Canals, almost as numerous as the larger streams, serve to con- 
nect the industrial region of the lowlands farther north, where coal 
mines and factories abound, with the metropolis on the Seine system 
to the south; the canals not infrequently tunnel under the divides; 
a tunnel of this kind five k. in length, north of St. Quentin, passes 
under the divide (142 m.) between the headwaters of the Somme and 
the Escaut. 

Excepting Amiens (93,207) on the Somme, there are no 
large cities in this region; but the names of many smaller 
cities have become famous during the War. Arras (see Fig. 
40) hes on the Scarpe near the descent of the chalk uplands to 
the lowlands of northernmost France or French Flanders, to 
be described in section 60; Peronne and St. Quentin He on the 
uppermost Somme; Albert and Roye are on its branches; 
Noyon stands between two of the tabular hills west of the 
middle Oise; La Fere and Chauny He in the Oise valley where 
it approaches the tabular hifls north of the Aisne. The vil- 



130 THE UPPER OISE AND THE SOMME 

lages of the region are arbitrarily placed on the inter-valley 
arches, on the slopes or in the valleys. 

54. The War Front from the Oise to the Scarpe. Interest in 
the simple landscapes of this region centers at present in their 
relation to the shifts of the iSghting front between the Allied 
and the German armies. From September, 1914, to the sum- 
mer of 1916, the line of contact suffered little change; trend- 
ing southward from the Belgian frontier near the coast across 
the lowlands of French Flanders, it ascended to the chalk 
uplands near Arras and continued to Noyon, where it turned 
eastward across the middle Oise to the valley of the Aisne, 
as noted above. Midway between Arras and Noyon, the 
line crossed the sinuous valley of the Somme, and there in 
early July, 1916, the battle of the Somme resulted in an ad- 
vance toward Peronne. Three months later the advance was 
increased, and the indentation thus made in the German line 
endangered the adjacent salients, one on the north including 
Bapaume between the Somme and the Scarpe, the other of 
larger area on the south including Hoye and Noyon between 
the Somme and the Oise. 

The vertex of the Bapaume salient at Thiepval was cut off 
in mid-November, 1916, and at the end of that year, Peronne 
was almost reached. A still closer approach to Bapaume was 
made near the close of February following. Thereupon the 
Germans made a " strategic retirement," barbarously dev- 
astating the countryside as they withdrew, so that in March, 
1917, the two salients were reduced to a rectified front, run- 
ning in a comparatively direct line from near Arras, south- 
southeast to La Fere on the Oise, where the valley plain was 
flooded by opening the canal further north as a means of 
protecting the retreat; thence over the tabular hills to the 
Aisne below Soissons. Thus Bapaume in the northern salient. 



SHIFTS OF THE BATTLE FRONT 



131 



Arras 



kjse^K. ' 



25 30 M. 

, .. OUTLINE MAP 

\ A^O^-, OP THE FRONT FROM 

<*4;.> ARRAS TO SOISSONS 

(j/O Cambrai 

(0 




FiQ. 39. Map op the Front from Arras to Soissons 



132 THE UPPER OISE AND THE SOMME 

Roye and Noyon in the southern saHent, and Peronne be- 
tween the two, were recovered. The length of the rectified 
front to which retreat was made is about 110 k.; the maxi- 
mum depth of retreat was nearly 50 k. The next important 
objectives back of the line thus assumed and west of the Oise 
were Cambrai and St. Quentin: an important eastward 
drive toward Cambrai was made by the British in November, 
1917; combined with this the northward advance of the 
French toward Laon at a little earlier date left St. Quentin 
and La Fere in increasingly exposed positions. 

While this book is going through the press, March, 1918, 
the counter-drive of the Germans is in progress and line of the 
front has been shifted back again from the eastern to the 
western position, shown in Fig. 39. South of the front 
which they have thus gained, the first upland belt, indented 
by the oblique valley of the Oise, is reduced to its least 
width; here the natural rampart around Paris is most vul- 
nerable : here, attack and defence will be most violent. 



CHAPTER XI 

THE NORTHWESTERN UPLANDS 

55. The Chalk Country of Picardy and Normandy. The wide 
saddle of nearly horizontal chalk strata, between the Ardennes 
highlands on the northeast and the Armorican hills beyond 
the Seine on the southwest, includes the uplands of the old 
provinces of Picardy and Normandy. These uplands reach 
altitudes of from 130 to 200 m., and occupy a belt which 
borders the English Channel for 220 k. from Cape Oris Nez 
to the Bay of the Seine and extends 80 k.or more inland; they 
are adjoined on the northeast by the lowlands of northern- 
most France, described in the following chapter; they de- 
cline gradually southeastward to the lower land along the 
middle Oise; farther south toward Paris they are overlapped 
by the uplands of the Vexin salients, described in section 18. 
The underlying chalk controls the features of all this region : 
indeed, an area stretching northward from the lower Seine to 
the coast is known as the Pays de Caux or the Chalk-land 
(Caux, provincial for Chaux = Latin, calx; English, chalk). 
The features here encountered therefore repeat those de- 
scribed in the preceding chapter, but with somewhat greater 
relief. 

The uplands, divided by irregularly branching valleys, un- 
dulate gently in broad, faint arches one after another, and are 
of uniform appearance over large areas. Their surface is 
usually cloaked with a fine and fertile loam; where this is 
absent, as is commonly the case on the slopes toward the 

133 



134 



THE NORTHWESTERN UPLANDS 



e'o MILES o 
,.T. ' ■■;*'. ...Bruges 

Nieuport ^s,, ' 




Fig. 40. The Uplands op Northern France 



CHALK COUNTRY OF PICARDY AND NORMANDY 135 

valleys, the soil formed by leaching out the soluble chalk 
consists of a reddish clayey residue, frequently packed with 
flints, as already described in the region between the Oise and 
the Somme. Several large forested areas, traversed by lanes 
in geometrical patterns, are preserved on the uplands border- 
ing the lower Seine, but elsewhere the prevailing absence of 
woodland, hedges, and fences gives the gently rolling land- 
scape a peculiarly open quality over large areas, in spite of its 
subdivision into fields, crossed in the distance by road-lines 
of spaced trees. 

The irregularly branching valleys of the chalk uplands are wide- 
spaced, because so large a proportion of rain water has for ages past 
sunk into the ground that little has been left to act as wandering sur- 
face streams in the work of valley excavation. The smaller streams 
extend, as commonly happens in areas of horizontal strata, in all 
directions indifferently; but exception must be made to this rule in 
the case of the lower Somme and several neighboring streams, for 
their northwestern trends are markedly rectilinear and parallel. The 
rule of wandering streams obtains, however, over a much larger area 
and is nowhere better shown than in the upper Somme, which, as 
already described in section 53, winds about in an uncertain manner 
on the marshy flood plain of its serpentine valley. Through most of 
this region, the upland spurs interlock with the valley bottoms very 
much as the fingers of a hand, held palm down, may interlock with 
those of another hand, held palm up; but the upland fingers are 
broad with irregularly lobed margins, and the valley fingers are 
narrow with many irregular branches. 

56. Villages and Roads. Villages are compactly clustered on 
the uplands, for the underlying chalk being a pervious rock, 
ground water is sometimes 60 or 80 m. below the upland sur- 
face; hence economy demands that one well shall serve many 
families. The village churches or tree-groups form the chief 
landmarks on the broad uplands. The better roads are sur- 



1S6 THE NORTHWESTERN UPLANDS 

faced with broken flints packed in chalk, and are gleaming 
white in sunshine; they serve well if well used, but the flints 
present many sharp edges if ordinary traffic is so infrequent 
as to let rain-water wash off the binding material or if heavy 
traffic wears it away. 

Some of the roads and railways follow relatively direct courses 
across the uplands, rising and falling with the gentle undulations of 
the surface, turning slightly to approach a larger village or curving 
around a valley head to avoid steep descents or to save the heavy 
cost of viaduct construction; others follow the larger valleys, as- 
sured of easy and steady grades, but turning as the valleys turn and 
bridging the main and side streams as occasion requires; still others 
connect the upland and the valley roads by branching along little 
side-valleys that unite the two levels. The main line of the Northern 
Railway — le Chemin de Fer du Nord — from Paris to Calais, via 
Amiens, shows many of these devices. 

Woodland is more common on the valley sides than on the up- 
lands. Thehigherpartsof the valley ends are dry; running streams 
are not found until the valley is followed down to a considerable 
depth below the upland surface; there the verdant valley floors are 
wide enough for small fields and gardens, near which every house 
may have its own well, for ground water is here found at little depth; 
hence the compact villages around the deep wells of the uplands are 
replaced in the valleys by long villages of detached houses. 

Some of the larger valleys, like that of the Somme, have wet and 
marshy flood plains in which the water area is increased by the ex- 
cavation of peat for fuel and by the construction of fish ponds. The 
lower valley of the Somme is also notable for its gravel terraces of 
moderate height but of great scientific interest, for it was in these 
terraces near Abbeville, 25 k. inland from the coast, that to the 
astonishment not to say incredulity of the world Boucher de Perthes 
seventy-five years ago found artificially chipped fiints, the first au- 
thentic traces of prehistoric man, the contemporary of animals now 
extinct, and thus made a beginning for the science of archaeology. 

57. Valley of the Seine. The lower Seine is the chief river of 
this region; it has so winding a course that a direct distance 



VALLEY OF THE SEINE 137 

of 70 k, inland from the head of its estuary is nearly doubled 
if the river is followed. Each convex curve of the winding 
river sweeps around the base of a great amphitheater, 3 to 5 k. 
in radius, alternately on the right and left bank, where the 
upland is undercut to a steep descent; and into each river 
curve, alternately from the left and right, a spur slopes down 
from the opposite upland. Scroll-shaped belts of flood plain, 
sweeping around the spur ends, border the river, now on one 
bank, now on the other, in the manner described for the 
looped course of the river below Paris in section 19. 

The tide, advancing through the narrowing estuary of the Seine, is 
crowded into a rapid current which at certain times each month rises 
rapidly (4 meters in 30 minutes) and rushes 50 or 60 k. up the river, 
assuming for part of this distance the form of foaming waves, 
known as le mascaret, and causing a quick rise from low to high water; 
the flood current may be so swift that river boats omit landings while 
it is running. The fall from high water to low is more leisurely; 
then the normal down-valley current prevails. The rapid inflow 
must have been an aid to the sea-faring Northmen, when they came 
up the river in the ninth century in their boats as far as Rouen and 
established themselves in the district which, as Normandy, has since 
borne their name. The tidal currents give so great a reenforcement 
to the normal current of the river through the lower 30 k. of its 
estuarine length, that the upland spurs, around which the river 
farther upstream flows in so winding a course, are here nearly worn 
away, and the deep-water channel through the low-tide mud flats of 
the widened estuary is almost directly from east to west. 

The buoys along the channel must be carefully regarded. It is 
recorded that a British steamer some years ago unwarily ran half 
aground on the channel border at high tide; the ebb current scoured 
away the mud under the bow; bow and stern being then unsup- 
ported at low water, the vessel broke in half and the two ends tilted 
down, leaving the broken hull high and dry amidships; the next 
flood and ebb currents scoured away the mud under the break, and 
at the second low water, both parts of the hull settled deeper than 



138 THE NORTHWESTERN UPLANDS 

before; after a few days the vessel was almost buried out of sight, 
a total loss. 

The modern commercial city of Havre (136,159) lies on the 
northern shore of the estuary. At the third pronounced north- 
eastern curve of the Seine counting up stream, and 70 k. in a 
direct line east of Havre, but 120 k. following the river, the 
ancient city of Rouen (124,987) is situated on the right bank: 
here are the first bridges over the river. A spur of the upland 
next east of the city, 160 m. in altitude, is ascended by an in- 
clined railway and offers a fine prospect over the open valley 
and the enclosing uplands. Elboeuf is on the next south- 
western curve of the river above Rouen. Navigation up 
stream to Paris is made possible for good sized vessels by 
locks. An important line of the Western Railway — Chemin 
de Fer de I'Ouest — follows the winding valley around its 
larger curves from Paris to Rouen, but shortens its route 
somewhat by crossing the river several times and by tunnel- 
ing through the narrower spurs; its continuation from Rouen 
to Havre passes over the uplands. 

No cities of importance are found on the inter- valley uplands; 
they are all in the larger valleys or on the coast. Beauvais and 
Neufchatel lie in or near the depression of the Pays de Bray (de- 
scribed in the second following paragraph), Amiens and Abbeville 
are on the Somme; while Fecamp, Dieppe, and Boulogne-sur-Mer 
are on the coast, as will be further stated below. Some of the upland 
villages are of historic interest as the scene of battles between the 
French and English, during the period in which the Plantagenet 
kings of England tried to maintain territory in France inherited from 
their Norman predecessors; thus Crecy where Edward III defeated 
the French in 1346 lies on the upland north of Abbeville; Agincourt 
where Henry V defeated the French in 1415 is some 30 k. farther 
northeast (see map, page 134); but forty years later, the French 
drove the English out of France. 



THE BOULONNAIS 



139 



58. Exceptional Features. A district of exceptional features, known 
as le Boulonnais, is found in Artois, the northernmost province of 
France; it borders the narrowest^ part of the Channel opposite 
Dover, where the coast makes out in the salient of which Cape Oris 




Fig. 41. The Boulonnais, between Boulogne and Calais 



Nez is the extremity, with Calais on the northeast and Boulogne- 
sur-Mer on the south. A broad and ancient domelike upheaval of 
the strata extends across the Channel from southeastern England 
and here enters France for 25 k. ; as a result the chalk beds, which 
elsewhere cover the uplands, have been worn away from the up- 
heaved area, so that their slanting edge forms an irregular rampart 
around an enclosed space in which the underlying strata, eroded into 



140 



THE NORTHWESTERN UPLANDS 



hills, meet the coast in cliffs of variable structure and form. It was 
in the gently slanting strata on the outer slope of this upheaved area 
that the first " artesian " well was bored. 

Another exceptional district is a lowland belt, known as the Pays 
de Bray, which crosses the middle of the chalk uplands northwest of 
Paris; its outline resembles that of a long-bow and its string, with 
the gently convex bowside to the southwest, and a string length of 
about 70 k. from northwest to southeast. This district is deter- 
mined by an unsymmetrical upheaval, partly shown in section 
in Fig. 44; but the upheaval occurred so long ago in the geological 




Fig. 42. The Pays de Bray 

past that the covering strata of chalk have been worn away and the 
weaker underlying strata have been worn down in a depression. 
Along the southwestern side of the depression the edge of the up- 
turned chalk forms a long and well defined ridge (200-230 m.), a 
superb line of defence from attack on the north. 

The Pays de Bray is therefore a good example of a lowland that 
has been eroded along an upheaved belt of weak strata, and that is 
enclosed by uplands of less upheaved but more resistant strata. 
The lowland is partly drained northwestward to the coast by the 
rectilinear Bethune, at the mouth of which lies Dieppe; but also by 
the Andelle and the Epte which flow from the central part of the 
lowland southward through the chalk uplands to the Seine. The 
Th^rain flows southeastward to the Oise in a valley of the uplands 



THE CLIFT COAST 141 

next northeast of the lowland. The fertile soils of the lowland and 
its branch valleys are noted for their dairy farms. Its chief towns 
are, as above noted, Neufchatel near the northwestern end and 
Beauvais on the northeastern margin. It is the erosion following the 
Pays de Bray upheaval, where it was prolonged with decreasing 
strength to the southeast across the Oise, that causes the separation 
of the smaller upland salients west of the middle Oise below Com- 
piegne from the larger upland salient that extends west of the lower 
Oise, as described in section 18. 

59. The Clift Coast along the Channel. The sea cliffs by 
which, for a distance of some 200 k., the chalk uplands are cut 
off along the coast — similar to but of much greater 'longshore 
extent than those of Dover in southeastern England — are 
the first sight of France for many a transatlantic traveller. 
Their outline is of gently sinuous pattern; their height is 
from 80 to 130 m.; their precipitous gray face is faintly 
marked with horizontal bands of included flints, irregular in 
form and of fist or head size, and is disfigured by vertical 
streaks of soil-wash. 

The cliffs have manifestly been cut back far behind the original 
seaward extension of the chalk strata. Little valleys in the uplands 
are sharply cut off in the cliff face. They sometimes converge toward 
the shore line, as if to join a trunk valley farther on; but the trunk 
valley as well as the upland which enclosed it have been undercut 
and consumed, and their space is now occupied by the sea. If one 
walks along the cliff top, whence a beautiful view over the Channel 
may be enjoyed, fissures may be seen parallel to the cliff face and a 
few feet back from it, presaging the detachment and fall of a great 
slab or block; the older furrows of a plowed upland field may some- 
times be noted on the dangerous side of the fissure; detached slabs, 
shattered by their fall, are occasionally to be recognized in heaps 
of fragments at the cliff base, not yet wholly removed by the restless 
sea. 

A sheet of beach detritus spreads seaward from the cliff base on the 
slowly deepening bottom; it consists of cobbles and pebbles on 



142 THE NORTHWESTERN UPLANDS 

shore, and of pebbles and sand farther off shore; the cobbles, peb- 
bles, and sand are the waterworn fragments of flints which withstand 
the beating of the waves long after the chalk in which they were 
embedded in the cliff face has been disintegrated and dissolved to a 
residual silt and washed far out to the deeper sea floor. The vertical 
range of the tide from high to low water is six or seven m. ; the flood 
and ebb 'longshore currents are strong. The beach is submerged 
when stormy winds drive the turbid waves of high tides against the 
cliff; it emerges at low tide in a broad and gentle seaward slope, ter- 
raced near its top with long lines of horizontal benches or "curbs," 
which mark the reach of recent high tides. Where cobbles and peb- 
bles are absent, the low-tide beach is at some places dangerous from 
quicksands; where storms have removed the beach detritus, the 
wave-cut rock platform which underhes it is laid bare. 

Along the middle of the reentrant in the northwestern coast, 
known as the Bight of the Somme, between Boulogne-sur- 
Mer and Dieppe, the upland margin is fronted for a distance 
of 65 k. by an alluvial lowland, 12 k. in greatest breadth, 
except where it is interrupted by the Somme estuary. The 
outer border of the lowland bears a belt of dunes, which 
broadens to the north toward Boulogne; the inner border is a 
line of abandoned sea cliffs, which must have been cut back 
by the sea before the low plain was formed, and which were 
then presumably as steep as the exposed cliffs at Dieppe and 
farther southwest, but which are now of more moderate slope, 
since the waves no longer remove the talus from their base. 

The clift coast of the northwestern uplands does not favor 
navigation, as it has no good natural harbors. Many of the 
smaller upland valleys, without streams except in wet weather, 
are not cut down to sea level; they appear merely as depres- 
sions in the cliff top when seen from off shore. It is only in the 
larger valley mouths, drained by perennial streams and there- 
fore cut down deep enough to be entered by short sea arms, 
that harborage is found; and even here the beach detritus is 



HARBORS OF THE CLIFT COAST 143 

so actively and abundantly swept along shore by storm 
waves and tidal currents that it is difficult to prevent the 
harbors from being filled up. Long jetties have been con- 
structed for this purpose where the need of harbors warrants 
it. Protection is thus afforded vessels at a dozen points; the 
chief ports where, with the aid of breakwaters and dredging, 
depth of water sufficient for larger vessels is provided are 
Calais (72,322) and Boulogne-sur-Mer (53,128) on the Straits 
of Dover (Pas de Calais), Dieppe near the mid-length of the 
clift coast, and Havre which lies on the north side of the 
largest reentrant, a little back from the clift outer coast at 
the estuarine mouth of the largest river, the Seine. Etretat, 
Fecamp, and St. Valery-en-Caux are watering places in 
valleys on the coasts between Havre and Dieppe. 



CHAPTER XII 

THE LOWLANDS OF NORTHERNMOST FRANCE 
AND WESTERN BELGIUM 

60. The Lowland, the Maritime Plain, and the Dunes. The 
chalk uplands of Picardy and Artois fall off abruptly north- 
eastward to the lowland of the district known as Flanders, 
partly in France, partly in Belgium, where the chalk strata, 
warped down to lower levels, are overlapped by younger beds 
of sand and silt. This area may be divided into three belts 
parallel to the shore line; the middle belt is a low maritime 
plain, about 30 k. wide in Belgium, but widening northeast- 
ward; it is of fine, moist soil, hardly above the level of the 
sea, from which it is separated by the outer belt of beach and 
dunes; the third belt is farther inland, a gently undulating 
sandy lowland, which rises gradually southeastward; it may 
be called the lowland of Flanders. The lowland will be first 
described; then the maritime plain, and finally the belt of 
dunes. 

The Lowland of Flanders. The lowland is relatively infer- 
tile : it is the narrow beginning of a long belt of sandy coun- 
try originally covered with heathery moors, which widens 
northeastward and stretches across Belgium and Holland into 
Germany. Parts of the surface are more fertile, where it is 
cloaked with a fine yellow loam, which is rapidly transformed 
into mud in wet weather, as many a soldier knows who has 
served in the trenches hereabouts. Occasional hills surmount 
the lowland. On the French side of the boundary, the pic- 

144 



THE LOWLAND OF FLANDERS 145. 

turesque town of Cassel, east of St. Omer and 28 k. south of 
Dunkirk on the coast, crowns one of the hills, 170 m. in height; 
to the east near Ypres, on Belgian territory, Mt. Kemmel 
rises to 150 m. altitude. 

Farther inland, two broad areas of lowland plains, almost 
free from hills, lie at distances of from 50 to 70 and from 80 to 
100 k. southeast of the coast at Dunkirk; the first plain is 
drained northward across the Belgian lowland by the Lys; 
the second is similarly drained by the Scarpe and the Escaut, 
small streams of leisurely flow, hardly below the level of the 
adjoining meadows. East of the second plain, the lowland 
rises toward the interior, with occasional hills above the gen- 
eral surface : thus 5 k. north of Tournai on the Escaut, Mt. 
St. Aubert reaches an altitude of 150 m., while the rolling low- 
land stands at 30' or 40 m. Many of the main roads here- 
abouts are surfaced with square-cut " Belgian blocks " of 
resistant rock, mostly from the Ardennes, thus making a 
durable but rough roadway. 

It is into this lowland district that the belts of strongly tilted 
coal-bearing formations, which reach the surface farther east along 
the northern slope of the Ardennes (see map, p. 153), are extended 
through western Belgium into France (see map, p. 134) beneath the 
horizontal strata — chalk, clays, and sands — of the Paris basin, 
and as a result this district is of great industrial importance. All the 
many coal mines upon which the industries depend must sink their 
shafts as at Lens near the southern side of the Lys plain, through 
some 50 or 100 m. of barren horizontal strata, before the tilted coal 
beds are reached. 

Lnie (217,807), an important industrial and university city on 
the low plain of the Lys, is the largest of the region: Roubaix (122,- 
723) and Tourcoing (82,644), manufacturing cities of rapid growth 
like LiUe in the last century, are a little farther north in an indenta- 
tion of the frontier, and across the frontier He the Belgian cities of 
Courtrai a short distance farther on and Tournay to the east. Valen- 



146 LOWLANDS OF FRANCE AND BELGIUM 



I 



ciennes is on the low plain of the Escaut; Cambrai is on the same 
river and Douai on its branch, the Scarpe; the last two lie near the 
southern border of the lowland near the chalk uplands on the south. 
All of these industrial cities profit from the coal mines of their 
district. 

61. The Maritime Plain of Flanders . The maritime plain is 
of special interest. The fine soils of the plain are underlaid at a 
moderate depth by the seaward extension of the sandy strata 
which form the inland plain, and which testify by their marine 
fossils to an ancient submergence of the region beneath the 
sea. But between the surface soils and the underlying sandy 
strata, an extensive marsh deposit of peat and other fresh 

3^^ DUNES f^ARlTIME PLAIN t2^1i;5;i2. 



Fig. 43. The Maritime Plain of Flanders 

water plants (black in Fig. 43) is found, a meter or more in 
thickness. A broad emergence of the region must have taken 
place in prehistoric times to permit the formation of the 
fresh-water marsh deposit. Then a submergence must have 
ensued, as the fine soils, which now cover the marsh deposit 
to a depth of several meters, contain shells like those still 
found in the adjoining sea. 

Singular to relate, the upper layers of the marsh deposit contain 
relics of the stone age and the bronze age of prehistoric man, as well 
as Gallic and Roman coins down to the fourth century of the Chris- 
tian era. Hence the submergence of the marshy belt presumably 
occurred in the next following century. After the submergence took 
place, the sea border of Flanders must have resembled the present 
Frisian coast of northern Holland, where the outlying dune islands 
are separated from the mainland by a debatable belt, alternately 
flooded and laid bare by the rising and falling tide; and just as those 
Frisian islands are now inhabited, although the debatable belt be- 



THE MARITIME PLAIN 147 

hind them is ordinarily submerged, so the dunes along the Flemish 
coast appear to have been inhabited through the dark ages from the 
seventh to the twelfth century, while the area of the maritime plain 
that they enclose was submerged under a very shallow sea. The 
later emergence whereby the present maritime plain was formed is 
believed to be due not so much to an uplift of the land as to the 
accumulation of marine sediments, swept into the shallow sea by 
currents from the southwest. 

The maritime plain of Flanders thus constituted is remark- 
ably level, hardly varying two meters in height in as many 
kilometers of distance. Its surface is somewhat lower than 
present sea level at high tide. It therefore offers a remarkable 
contrast to the chalk uplands of Picardy and Normandy. 
There water is deficient and the village houses cluster around 
deep wells; here water is in excess; the plain is not only 
threatened by floods from high tides, especially when land- 
ward storms brush the rising sea up on the shelving shore, but 
it is also in danger of floods from rain and from rivers. 

The low and level plain must therefore be drained by many 
ditches and canals to the sluggish streams, the fields must be 
enclosed by dikes, and the stream mouths at breaches in the 
dunes must be closed with locks; the locks are kept shut at 
high tide when the sea almost reaches the base of the dunes, 
but are opened twice a day to discharge the streams when the 
tide falls and lays the beach bare far outside of the high-tide 
shore line. So threatening are the dangers of inundation from 
land, sky, and sea, that the inhabitants of the plain have for 
centuries past organized themselves in societies, known as 
" Wateringues," for maintaining the dikes, the canals, and the 
locks. 

62. The Dune-hordered Coast. The dune-bordered shore line 
of Flanders is ahnost rectilinear and the sea is so shallow that 



148 LOWLANDS OF FRANCE AND BELGIUM 

the retreating tide lays bare a broad flat of sands. All the 
ports of the smooth shore line are of artificial construction; 
their basins must be dredged and their entering channels must 
be protected by long jetties. Calais lies at the junction of the 
plain and the chalk uplands on the south, and is the chief 
port in French Flanders; its preeminence results from its near- 
ness to England; but this element of its situation has exposed 
it to the hardships of repeated sieges. Then follows Grave- 
lines, just back of the dunes at the mouth of the Aa, with 
St. Omer on the same small stream at the inner border of the 
maritime plain, 30 k. back from the shore line; next is Dun- 
kirk, the chief port for the industrial cities of northernmost 
France, but formerly repeatedly fought over, as in the Battle 
of Dunes, when the French and English defeated the Spanish 
in 1658; only two hundred years ago it was the resort of so 
many corsairs who raided shipping that on the demand of 
the English its fortifications were demolished and its harbor 
filled up. The maritime plain here is narrow: the belt of 
dunes, with the city at the breach, is distant only 12 k. from 
the town of Bergues on a low hill at the inner margin of the 
plain. 

The present residence of the King of Belgium is just across the 
frontier in the village of La Panne, which was saved from conquest in 
the autumn of 1914 by opening the locks at Nieuport at the mouth 
of the Yser, 12 k. beyond, and flooding a tract of the plain between 
the dunes and Ypres, near the inner border of the maritime plain. 
Farther on is Ostend, important in time of peace for its traffic across 
the Channel; then, opposite Bruges, 15 k. from the sea on the border 
of the inland plain, come the shore towns of Blankenberghe and 
Zeebrugge, the latter used by the Germans as a submarine base. A 
few kilometers farther on beyond the border of Belgium, the irregu- 
lar estuarine coast of Holland gives access to the interior; there, 
65 k. inland from the outer coast lies the great Belgian port of Ant- 



THE PEOPLE OF FLANDERS 149 

werp (Anvers) on the Schelde; this city, although held by the Ger- 
mans, does not give them lawful outlet to the sea, because the 
navigable waters below the city are in Dutch territory. Farther on 
beyond the mouths of the Rhine, Rotterdam is a leading Dutch 
port, 25 k. inland on a dredged waterway. Then the continuous 
coast begins again, with its long line of dunes back of the beach, 
and back of the dunes a broad repetition of the maritime plain of 
Flanders in the " polders " of Holland as far as the shallow Zuyder 
sea. Near the beginning of the stretch, just behind the dunes, lies 
The Hague (French, La Haye; Dutch, 's-Gravenhage), now famous 
as the seat of the international Peace Court. 

The People of Flanders. Although the plain of Flanders is 
today shared along its length by France, Belgium, and Holland, 
its people vary more across its breadth, according as they live 
on the inland plain, the maritime plain, or the dunes, than 
according to their nationality. The infertility of the sandy in- 
land plain has been overcome by the persistent industry of its 
hard-working population; farther in the interior, the surface is 
higher and undulating with a better soil; there the population 
is denser and more prosperous. The maritime plain has on the 
other hand a rich soil, the cultivation of which well repays the 
labor that it demands : the plain is therefore closely dotted over with 
the buildings of well-to-do farmers, whose dwellings are erected on 
artificial mounds a meter or more in height, with stables and sheds 
around them; the laborers live in villages, above which the church 
towers form the only landmarks. The people of the dunes are fisher- 
men, sea-farers, or tradesmen, gathered in villages and cities at 
stream mouths; here the population is gl"eatly increased in summer 
time by seashore visitors. 

63. The War Front in Flanders. Military operations on the 
maritime plain of Flanders and on the inland plains of north- 
ernmost France have been hampered by the presence of 
ground water at a small depth beneath the surface, so that 
trenches are soon transformed into muddy ditches. Besides 
this, the whole surface of the plains becomes waterlogged in 
wet weather, making movement across the fields almost im- 



150 LOWLANDS OF FRANCE AND BELGIUM 

possible. Thus the advance made by British and French 
troops across the maritime plain to the low hills on the border 
of the inland plain in August, 1917, was halted more by a 
heavy rain than by the resistance of the opposing forces. The 
difficulty of movement here operates against both armies. 

The Germans have not succeeded in reaching Dunkirk and Calais, 
manifest objectives of great value as bases to prevent the transporta- 
tion of British troops and supplies across the narrow Channel; the 
Allies have not yet reached the equally manifest objectives of Ostend 
and Zeebrugge, the possession of which would prevent the use of the 
harbors of the Belgian coast as bases for German submarines; for 
be it remembered that, as noted above, the Belgian port of Antwerp 
has access to the sea only through a waterway that lies in Dutch 
territory. 

Of the two pairs of objectives, the second would appear to be the 
more difficult to maintain after gaining it; for until the Germans are 
driven altogether out of western Belgium, the attainment of Ostend 
and Zeebrugge would give the Allies only a low and narrow coastal 
belt, the occupation of which would be as difficult as that of the pro- 
verbially unfavorable position " between the devil and the deep 
sea." The extreme flatness of the maritime plain and the inland 
plains of the Lys and the Escaut tends to emphasize the strategic 
value of the low hills by which they are bordered: hence the neces- 
sity of dislodging the Germans from the semi-circle of hills east of 
Ypres, which the British forces gained in the summer and autumn of 
1917; hence again where the chalk uplands on the south overlook 
the plain of the Lys, a desperate battle was waged for the possession 
of the outlying Vimy ridge, north of Arras and overlooking, though 
only from its moderate height of 124 m., the lowland occupied by 
Lens, an important coal-mining center. The occupation of this rich 
mining and manufacturing region by the Germans since an early 
stage of the war has been a heavy loss to France. 



CHAPTER XIII 

REGIONS NORTH AND NORTHEAST OF FRANCE 

64. The Ardennes and Beyond. The uplands and highlands 
of southeastern Belgium, with small adjoining areas of France 
and Luxembourg and a larger area of western Germany, are 
known in their higher part as the Ardennes (see map, p. 153). 
Their total area roughly resembles a half-moon, measuring 
180 k. east-northeastward along the diametral side, which is 
followed for much of its length by the Sambre-Meuse valley, 
and 80 k. across (southward) to the convex margin; the 
greater altitudes are from 400 to 580 m. If this region is ap- 
proached from the south, between the Meuse and the Luxem- 
bourg frontier, ascent is soon made from the overlapping 
strata of the sixth upland belt of northeastern France, as 
described in section 35, to the highland of the Ardennes 
proper; on the west, where the ascent is more gradual, the 
lower slope is overlapped by the northern extension of the 
chalk uplands of northern France, as described in section 46. 

The gradual northwestward descent of the Ardennes to the 
Sambre-Meuse valley is continued beyond it by the uplands 
of central Belgium; and these slope down to the lowlands of 
the coast and of the estuarine district of Holland. The north- 
eastern part of the highland area declines through uplands to 
the lowlands of the Rhine west of Cologne. To the east, the 
Ardennes are adjoined by the Eifel highlands of western Ger- 
many; farther south the Ardennes are separated from the 
Hunsriick section of the Slate-mountain highlands {Schie- 

151 



152 NORTH AND NORTHEAST OF FRANCE 

fergehirge) of western Germany by the Luxembourg embay- 
ment of less altitude, into which the strata of the sixth and 
seventh upland belts of eastern France enter northeastward 
in tabular masses, as will be described in section 71. 

The most striking feature of the Ardennes is the general evenness 
of their high-standing areas, which are sometimes so flat as to be 
boggy in spite of their altitude. The next most striking feature is 
the irregular course of the deep and narrow valleys by which the high- 
lands are trenched. No account need here be taken of rock structure, 
partly because it is very complicated, more because the different 
rock masses, steeply inclined as a rule, are truncated without regard 
to their composition or attitude by the highland surface, and be- 
cause the valleys very generally follow courses that pay no heed to 
the rock-formation boundaries. It is only by way of exception, and 
chiefly in the area near the mid-northern boundary of the region, 
that the upland ridges and the valleys between them show a relation 
to the northeast-southwest trends of the stronger and weaker 
structural belts. 

Some of the valleys, especially in the less elevated uplands, are 
open enough for easy occupation; others, especially in the highlands, 
are narrow and steep-sided. Many of the rivers are extraordinarily 
serpentine; such is most conspicuously the case with the Semois, 
which flows westward in the southern slope of the highland (see 
diagram, p. 81), and to a smaller degree with the Lesse, which flows 
westward from the central highland area; both of these rivers flow 
into the north-flowing Meuse in its narrow, gorge-hke vaUey, which 
is also sinuous, though not to so remarkable a degree as that of the 
Semois. Further east, the Ourthe and its main branches, the Am- 
bl^ve and Vesdre, surprisingly sinuous in much of their course, drain 
a large highland area northward to the second elbow of the Meuse 
at Lidge, where it turns north toward HoUand. 

In the higher and sharply incised districts, the valley sides are 
wholly abandoned to forest growth, although parts of the highlands 
themselves are cleared and cultivated: thus the town of Rocroi 
(390 m.) stands in the midst of a farming district on the upland west 
of the Meuse gorge; its church tower may be seen from the high- 



THE ARDENNES 




154 NORTH AND NORTHEAST OF FRANCE 

lands miles away to the east, rising over the even skyline, with the 
deep gorge of the Meuse hardly perceptible in the middle distance. 
Although the region is by no means mountainous, and although 
movement is easy upon the highlands between the valleys, the 
Ardennes are difficult to traverse because of the deep, narrow, and 
sinuous valleys by which they are trenched. Together with the 
Slate-mountain highlands to the east, they separate the path of the 
German invasion of 1870 from the path of the invasion of 1914 by a 
distance of 250 k. 

65. The Gorge of the Meuse. The narrow and winding gorge 
of the Meuse is the only cross-cut by which the traverse of the 
Ardennes highlands can be avoided. It would be called a 
canyon in the western United States. Its situation is peculiar, 
for the river in adopting its course through the high ground 
instead of running westward around it seems to have defied 
the general rule that water runs down hill. In explanation of 
this peculiarity it may be confidently believed that the course 
of the river was adopted antecedent to the upheaval of the 
highland, when the Ardennes area was lower than the basin 
of the upper Meuse in northeastern France; further, that the 
upheaval of the highland was so slow that it did not suffice to 
turn the river out of its antecedent course : the river cut down 
its gorge about as fast as the highland was upheaved. Rivers 
of this kind have been aptly compared to a bandsaw in a 
lumber mill; the saw holds its place while ripping its way 
through a log that is pushed against it. 

The gorge of the Meuse is occupied, in spite of its narrow- 
ness, by several towns which take advantage of local widen- 
ings of its floor: thus Revin, Fumay, and Givet lie within 
French territory, and Dinant in Belgian. The adjoining cities 
of M^zieres and Charleville have already been mentioned as 
lying in the open country to the south on the loops of the river 
before it enters the gorge; and Namur as marking the exit 



CENTRAL BELGIUM 155 

elbow, where the Meuse is joined by the Sambre from the 
west: this river also follows an incised meandering valley, 
but its depth is much less than that of the Meuse gorge. 

It was in the salient angle limited by the gorge of the Meuse on the 
east and the valley of the Sambre on the north, with the fortified city 
of Namur at its apex, that the French Fourth Army and the British 
Expeditionary Force attempted to check the German advance in 
August, 1914; but Namur was soon captured and the Germans, 
sweeping westward over the more open country north of the Sambre, 
threatened the British so seriously that the Allied forces were com- 
pelled to begin a retreat that was not stopped until the battle of the 
Marne was fought, a fortnight later, 180 k. to the south. 

An important railway runs with the Meuse through the 
Ardennes; but as it is dominated by the adjoining uplands, 
which for half the length of the river gorge lie in a north- 
ward loop of the French frontier, and as the fortress of 
Mezieres lies near the gorge entrance, this railway was not 
used by the Germans for the transportation of troops until 
after their army had passed around the western end of the 
highland area, and the retreat of the Allies had left the 
Ardennes open to enemy occupation. 

66. The Uplands of Central Belgium decline slowly from the 
Sambre-Meuse valley toward the coast and the lowlands of 
Holland; they are underlaid by the chalk and younger strata 
which have wrapped around into Belgium from the broad 
northwestern saddle of the Paris basin. The upland surface 
is worn down in wide-spaced, irregularly branching valleys, 
whereby it becomes broadly undulating: it is everywhere 
open to easy movement and the greater part of it is rich agri- 
cultural land, supporting a large population. A less produc- 
tive sandy strip slopes gradually to the maritime plain of 
Flanders, as described in section 60. 



156 NORTH AND NORTHEAST OF FRANCE 

The valley of the Sambre-Meuse along the northern base of the 
upland and highland area here considered is unlike the winding val- 
leys within the highlands, in that it follows in a general way an almost 
rectilinear east-northeast course, due to the structural guidance of 
certain steeply inclined weak strata in the long and narrow belt of the 
Belgian coal basin. The coal basin, if followed southwest, leaves the 
upper Sambre valley and turns westward under younger covering 
strata into northern France, as stated in section 60; in the opposite 
direction beyond the northward turn of the Meuse valley at Liege, it 
extends northeastward into western Germany; farther on in the 
same direction and across the Rhine lie the great industrial dis- 
tricts centering at Essen, the seat of the Krupp works in Rhineland, 
and at Dortmund in Westphalia. 

In the districts where the coal beds are most actively exploited, 
as in the western part of the Belgian field, the mining villages are 
connected by a network of railways. The coal-bearing belt is oc- 
cupied or adjoined by many industrial cities; Valenciennes, Douai, 
and Lens in France have already been mentioned: Mons, Charleroi, 
Namur, le Huy, and Liege (German, LUttich) lie in Belgium, and 
Aix-la-Chapelle (German, Aachen) is in Germany. Hence on round- 
ing the western slope of the Ardennes, the Germans not only made 
entrance into the open country of northern France, but took posses- 
sion of a highly productive industrial region on the way, which they 
have since worked to their own advantage. 

The uplands and lowlands of northern Belgium are drained 
chiefly by the Escaut (Schelde) and its branches, of which the 
chief are the Senne and the Dyle (see map, p. 10) ; on these 
two streams lie Brussels (French, Bruxelles; German, Briis- 
sel) and Louvain (German, Lawen), about half way from 
Charleroi and Namur to Antwerp (French, Anvers; German, 
Antwerpen), the chief Belgium port, where the Schelde widens 
as an estuary. This region has been repeatedly fought over 
in earlier centuries : Waterloo, the most famous battlefield of 
the first half of the nineteenth century, lies on the upland 15 k. 
south of Brussels. 



THE LORRAINE PLATEAU 157 

It should be remembered that a southward arm of Holland, in- 
cluding the city of Maastricht (H, Fig. 13), extends along the 
Meuse (Maas) and brings the Dutch frontier to within 15 k. of the 
northern border of the Ardennes, where the highland slope is deeply 
dissected by the Ourthe and its sinuous branches: hence the German 
invasion of Belgium was confined to this narrow space. There at the 
elbow of the Meuse lies Liege, which consequently had to bear the 
brunt of the first attack. 

67. The Lorraine Plateau and the Adjacent Districts of Ger- 
many. The upland saddle that spreads eastward from the 
Paris basin between the highlands of the Vosges and the 
Ardennes passes from the part of the old province of Lor- 
raine which is still retained by France to the part which, 
under the name of Lothringen, has been German territory 
since 1871, and beyond (see map, p. 54). It is an upland 
area, rather sharply incised by many irregularly branching 
valleys. Along its northern border is a belt of hillls, 30 or 
40 k. in breadth and 100 k. in length, and beyond these 
rises the Hunsriick section of the Slate Mountains. The 
eastern border of the plateau falls off to the lowland plain of 
the middle Rhine by a well-defined escarpment, due to a dis- 
placement on a profound fracture of the earth's crust. The 
name, Vosges, is sometimes extended to a southeastern part 
of the upland, from 350 to 450 m. in height, overlooking the 
Rhine plain, next north of the highlands of the Vosges proper : 
farther north, a more elevated forested area (570 m.) along 
the border of the upland, which there advances further east- 
ward, is known as the Hardt (or Haardt), in the political 
province of Pfalz. 

The less elevated upland, lying west of the Hardt and 
including the hilly belt south of Hunsriick highland, will here 
be described with the Lorraine plateau. The chief rivers of 
the plateau are the Moselle (German, Mosel) which crosses 



158 NORTH AND NORTHEAST OF FRANCE 

Coblentz 




Luneville 

Fig. 46. The Lorraine Plateau, the Hardt, and the HuNSRtJCK 



THE LORRAINE PLATEAU 159 

its northwestern part, and the Sarre (German, Saar), which 
rises in the Vosges and flows north-northwest across the 
plateau to the Moselle. These rivers and their branches flow 
in valleys that are well infcised below the upland level; more 
is told of them below. An upland area, associated with the 
Lorraine plateau and covered by a long lobe of the lime- 
stones of the seventh and sixth upland belts, extends north- 
ward between the Hunsriick and the Ardennes west of the 
Moselle, and will be described below under the name of 
Luxembourg embayment; the hilly belt next south of the 
Hunsriick, occupied by tilted ancient rocks and drained by 
the Nahe and the Glan, will also be treated on a later page. 

The eastward view of the Lorraine plateau from the de- 
tached portions — the Grand Couronne — of the fifth up- 
land belt (400 m.) on the French side of the frontier near 
Nancy, or from the bold scarp of the same belt (350 m.) on 
the German side of the frontier near Metz (see map, p. 60), 
discloses an undulating landscape (300 to 350 m.) stretching 
60 or 80 k. eastward. In the foreground of the view from near 
Nancy the irregular tabular extension (350 m.) of the sixth 
upland belt may be distinguished where the frontier follows 
the meandering valley of the Seille, a tributary of the Moselle, 
for some 30 k.; one of the tabular masses stretches 20 k. 
northeastward into German territory in a long promontory- 
like forested spur (330 m.) surmounting the rolling upland 
by about 100 m.; part of it is shown on the detailed map, 
page 161. 

In the foreground of the eastward view from above Metz, 
the sixth upland belt is of more normal form; its moderately 
scalloped scarp (310 m.), here lying some 20 k. east of the fifth 
upland belt, may be traced northward for 80 k. The rolling 
lower land east of the scalloped scarp is drained northward by 



160 NORTH AND NORTHEAST OF FRANCE 




Fig. 46. A Fobestbd Spur op the Sixth Uplan] 



A SPUR OF THE SIXTH UPLAND 



161 




Belt advancing Northeast of the Frontier 



162 NORTH AND NORTHEAST OF FRANCE 

the French Nied, so-called to distinguish it from a more 
eastern branch, the German Nied, of the same trunk stream, 
the Nied, which runs northward to the Sarre. 

68. Southern Part of the Lorraine Plateau. If the southern 
part of the plateau is now crossed eastward, a view from any- 
one of its many broadly rounded hills between the valleys 
of the Seille, the Sanon, the upper Sarre and their ramifying 
head-waters, shows a gently undulating skyline in which 
all the other hill crests unite. The skyline thus represents 
the upper surface of the broadly extended limestones that 
determine the seventh upland belt, the southern part of which 
has been described in section 25. The limestone area stretches 
eastward across the Sarre and ends in an irregular margin 
(350-400 m.), overlapping upon the underlying sandstones 
which rise southeastward in the mountainous hills of the 
Vosges; the same sandstones also extend eastward with small 
increase of altitude for 15 or 20 k. to the scarp where the up- 
land that they maintain descends abruptly to the Rhine val- 
ley. The soil of the limestone uplands is fertile and forests are 
of restricted area upon them; the sandstones have an infertile 
soil and are largely forested. 

The main lines of travel and transportation — road, canal, and 
railway — eastward from Paris and Nancy pass across the southern 
part of the Lorraine plateau, next to its ascent into the higher Vosges, 
on the way to Strasbourg, the chief city of Alsace in the Rhine valley- 
plain, and beyond. The national road is literally a highway east of 
Nancy, for though it must descend in crossing the middle course of 
the Seille near the frontier and headwaters of the Sarre farther east, 
it avoids the valleys as far as possible and follows the broadly arched 
hill crests of the limestone area; continuing, it reaches the very ex- 
tremity of a sandstone spur, 428 m. in altitude, directly overlooking 
the lowland of the Rhine, to which it descends in zigzags at the 
mouth of the short valley drained by the Zorn. The canal lies more 



RAILWAY ACROSS SOUTHERN LORRAINE 163 

to the south and follows the valleys: it first ascends the Sanon, a 
branch of the Meurthe, beyond the frontier; then crosses the divide 
to the upper valleys of the Sarre and winds around the hills that 
enclose them; here a branch canal turns north down the Sarre; the 
main canal then tunnels 2 k. under the next divide, and descends 
through many locks 100 m. in 13 k. along the valley of the Zorn to 
the Rhine lowland. Some of the valley heads near the upper Sarre 
are occupied by canal reservoirs, 3 or 4 k. in length, which branch 
into smaller side valleys above their dams. These small water bodies 
and the canals that they serve are the chief barriers to movement 
hereabouts. 

The main line of the Eastern railway, after making a southward 
detour from Nancy to Lun^ville on the Meurthe, turns up the 
V^zouse through the open country west of the Vosges (see section 
25), but soon leaves the stream, crosses the frontier midway between 
the Vezouse and the Sanon (see the detailed map, pp. 60-61), and 
then crosses the upper Sarre and tunnels the divide alongside of the 
canal to the Zorn valley. All three lines unite below the escarpment 
at Saverne (German, Zabern) on the Zorn, a town that became no- 
torious from a typical militaristic incident, the affront of a civilian 
by an army officer, the year before the war; it was in this case that 
the decision of a civil court was reversed by the military authorities. 

69. Northern Part of the Lorraine Plateau. A traverse of the 
northern part of the Lorraine plateau discovers a greater 
variety of reKef than that of the southern part, for the vaUeys 
of the Sarre and its branches are here more deeply eroded; 
moreover, the foundation rocks, which occupy the hilly belt 
farther northeast and the highlands of the Hunsriick and the 
Eifel, are here first seen in an area on the Sarre where the 
covering limestones and sandstones of the Lorraine saddle 
have been worn away. It is interesting to note that along the 
course of this river seven towns embody its name in theirs, the 
first and last being essentially the same. 

Around this area of the foundation rocks, the limestones 
of the seventh upland belt, overlying the basal sandstones, 



164 NORTH AND NORTHEAST OF FRANCE 



1 

rn: i 



appear in a well defined upland rim with a scalloped scarp; 
and within the rim, among the deformed foundation rocks, 
lies a coal field (dotted on map, p. 158) named from the Sarre 
(Saar) which flows across its western end, and on which Sarre- 
bruck (German, Saarbrilcken) and Sarrelouis (German, Saar- 
louis) are important coal-mining centers. The district is of 
great economic importance, as it furnishes a large supply of 
coal, some of which is used in the iron furnaces on the Moselle 
below (north of) Metz, for smelting the minette ore from the 
fifth upland belt. This district is furthermore historically 
interesting, as it was at Sarrebruck on German territory that 
the first encounter of the Prussian and French armies occurred 
in July, 1870. 

The limestone uplands continue to the east of the coal field 
through a district known as Westrich, where they are drained 
by the Blies; their greatest altitude (450 m.) is reached about 
50 k. northeast of the Sarre, where their margin is extremely 
irregular with many outlying patches. Farther on, the under- 
lying sandstones yield an infertile soil and are generally for- 
ested; here the upland gradually rises to the Hardt (500 to 
600 m.); the scarped border of the upland lies some 30 k. 
beyond the outlying patches of the limestones, and as it 
trends northeastward, it here stands from 30 to 50 k. farther 
east than the upland border near Saverne. Both the lime- 
stone and the sandstone uplands are deeply cut by many 
irregular and close-set valleys, making the district difficult to 
traverse. The chief towns of the limestone area are Sarre- 
guemines (German, Saargemund) and Zweibriicken. Pir- 
masens and Kaiserslautern lie on the adjoining sandstone 
area. 

The boundary between France and Germany before the war of 
1870 crossed this region in an irregular eastward course from a sharp 



THE HUNSRUCK 165 

bend of the Moselle, marked by the town of Sierck about 10 k. below 
its emergence from the sixth upland belt (see map, p. 67), to 
the Rhine lowland. It passed south of the Sarre coal field along the 
Sarre and the Blies through the Westrich district, and across the 
southern part of the Hardt; it then descended to the broad valley 
lowland a little north of a southward salient or prong in the marginal 
scarp, known as Hochwald, and followed the Lauter to the Rhine: 
Wissembourg (German, Weissenhurg) lies at the base of the scarp 
next south of the line. The boundary between Lorraine and Alsace 
ran southward along the scarp into the Vosges. 

The Hilly Belt south of the Hunsruck. To the north and 
northeast of the Sarre coal field, the foundation rocks there 
exposed constitute an irregularly hilly district of unsystem- 
atic form, except that occasional ridges manifest a north- 
east-southwest trend in accordance with the trend of the 
tilted belts of resistant rocks that determine them. The 
general altitude of the hills is from 350 to 550 m. Near the 
eastern end of the area, a mass of extra-resistant igneous 
rocks rises in the Donnersberg to 687 m. A small part of the 
area is drained westward by the Prims to the Sarre; the 
larger part is drained by the Glan and Nahe to the Rhine at 
Bingen. The lowland of the Rhine, east of the upland scarp, 
is of low relief, and densely populated. The important cities 
of Karlsruhe, Speyer, Mannheim, Worms, and Mainz lie on 
or near the river. 

70. The Hunsruck. A gradual northward increase of alti- 
tude leads from the Lorraine plateau to the Slate-mountain 
highlands of western Germany. The highlands are divided 
into four subequal parts by the gorge of the Rhine, trending 
northwest, and by the gorges of its opposing tributaries, the 
Moselle from the southwest and the Lahn from the north- 
east. The southern part is known as the Hunsruck, the 
western part as the EifeL 



166 NORTH AND NORTHEAST OF FRANCE 

The Hunsriick is a rolling highland, measuring 100 k. par- 
allel to the Moselle, and 40 k. in a transverse direction; its 
general altitude is from 450 to 500 m.; but it is surmounted 
by several linear forest-clad ridges known as the Hochwald, 
Idarwald, and Soonwald, trending northeast-southwest, and 
reaching heights of from 600 to 800 m.; and it is deeply cut 
by narrow steep-sided valleys around its borders toward the 
Sarre which flows to the Moselle on the southwest, the Moselle 
on the northwest, the Rhine on the northeast, and the Nahe 
which flows to the Rhine on the southeast. The undulating 
highland surface, away from the surmounting ridges and back 
of the marginal valleys, is cleared and cultivated, and is the 
seat of many quiet, out-of-the-way villages. All the border- 
ing valleys are followed byroads and railways; the highland 
is traversed chiefly by roads. 

71. The Luxembourg Emhayment. The Eifel resembles the 
Hunsriick in being a rolling agricultural highland, sharply 
dissected by deep-cut and frequently meandering valleys 
around its margin; but it has few surmounting eminences. 
It is confluent westward with Ardennes, except that on the 
south the two highlands are separated by the somewhat lower 
uplands of the Luxembourg embayment. This embayment 
is structurally similar to that by which the limestone strata 
of the seventh upland belt are led from the Lorrame plateau 
to the Hardt; but here two upland belts, the sixth nested in 
the seventh (see map, p. 153), are led northeastward, and the 
Luxembourg embayment is therefore of more comphcated sur- 
face form than the Lorraine plateau; but on the other hand, 
the troughing of the strata is here more pronounced than in 
Lorraine, and the scarped edges of the controlling strata, those 
of the sixth belt better defined than those of the seventh, have 
more regular trends. Their description would therefore be 



THE LUXEMBOURG EMBAYMENT 167 

comparatively simple, were it not that they are obliquely cut 
across by the deep and winding valleys of certain northern 
tributaries of the Moselle; as a result the verbal description 
of the separate members into which the upland belts are 
divided can hardly be attempted here. 

A brief statement must suffice. Let it first be understood that 
the sixth upland belt trends about parallel with the northward course 
of the fifth upland belt (see section 32) where the Moselle flows 
between the two from Metz to Thionville; but then, instead of soon 
turning to the west like the fifth upland belt north of Thionville, 
the sixth extends 60 k. to the northeast into the Luxembourg em- 
bayment, from which it returns sharply to the southwest before it 
again parallels the fifth belt, trending westward, along the southern 
border of the Ardennes, as shown on page 81. The slender north- 
eastern point of the sixth belt (350 m.) is divided into several dis- 
tinct hiUs; farther southwest, its two scarps, one facing southeast 
(350 m.), the other northwest (400 m.), are cut across by the Sure 
(German, Sauer) and several branch streams which rise in the 
Ardennes and flow through deep, narrow, and sinuous valleys south- 
eastward to the MoseUe. Farther southwest still, a long reentrant 
is cut back in the northwestern scarp, at the head of which lies the 
city of Luxembourg, capital of the Grand Duchy of the same name. 
Thence, westward, the sixth belt is fairly well developed on the 
flanks of the Ardennes, 20 or 10 k. north of the fifth; but its continu- 
ity is interrupted by the notches of many streams flowing southward 
from the highlands to the Chiers or the Meuse, and its border is not 
marked by a distinct scarp, as section 35 has already made clear. 

The seventh upland belt, less distinct than the sixth, makes a 
larger and broader excursion to the northeast: the apex of its curve 
lies 80 k. northeast of the turn of the fifth belt by Thionville, and 
20 k. beyond the extremity of the several hiUs of the sixth; its 
imperfectly developed scarps are turned southeast toward the ascent 
of the Eifel highlands and northwest toward the ascent of the 
Ardennes highlands: like the sixth belt the seventh belt and the 
adjoining highlands also are frequently cut across by deep valleys; 
not only by those of the Sure and its branches, but also farther to 
the northeast by the Kyll. On returning from the embayment along 



168 NORTH AND NORTHEAST OF FRANCE 



m 



the slope of the Ardennes the strata of the seventh upland belt are 
overlapped by those of the sixth and disappear: this foreshadows 
the fate that, further to the west, overtakes the strata of the sixth, 
fifth, fourth, and third belts in turn, until the last of them disap- 
pears under the northward overlap of the chalk near the headwaters 
of the Oise on the southern slope of the Ardennes west of the 
Meuse, as. shown on page 153. 

72. The Gorge of the Moselle. The course of the Moselle 
northeastward from Thionville, where it was left in section 33, 
soon leads it obliquely through the sixth upland belt, thence 
northward along a valley that is incised in the lower land east 
of the upland scarp, then again northeastward, to a belt of 
steeply inclined, weak strata, included between the more re- 
sistant rocks of the Hunsriick and Eifel highlands on either 
side, and extending for 55 k. northeastward or half of the 
distance to the Rhine; an open valley, from three to six k. in 
width, has there been excavated. The serpentine Sarre joins 
the Moselle from the south as the open valley is reached; the 
ancient city of Treves (German, Trier) lies in the valley a 
little farther northeast. Singularly enough, although the 
open valley continues northeastward as far as its belt of weak 
rocks extends, the Moselle does not follow it so far, but turns 
to the right and cuts a gracefully serpentine valley in the 
border of the Hunsriick highlands for the rest of its way to the 
gorge of the Rhine. Through this part of its course it is 
joined by the many small streams that have cut their steep- 
sided valleys in the margin of the adjoining highlands. 

Travel through this region is easy, though somewhat circuitous, 
along the main valleys; no serious obstacles are met on the rolling 
highlands, if the surmounting ridges and the incised marginal val- 
leys are avoided; even the ridges may be ascended or crossed with- 
out especial effort, for their forested slopes, not over-steep, bear 
many paths, and their crests are occasionally topt with outlook 



THE GORGE OF THE RHINE 169 

towers from which repaying views are obtained. But the spurs of the 
highlands, advancing into the labyrinth of sharply incised marginal 
valleys, are traversed with difficulty, and should be avoided except 
for the pleasure of scrambling in a rough country. 

The Gorge of the Rhine, a famous example of a narrow, river- 
cut valley across an uplifted land mass, offers a striking con- 
trast to the quiet highlands on either hand. Busy river-side 
villages occupy strips of alluvium at ravine mouths on one 
bank or the other; terraced vineyards clothe the sunlit 
slopes; railways and, for most of the gorge-length, roads also 
follow both banks. The river channel has been cleared of the 
rocks that here and there made its navigation difficult, and 
steamboats for passengers and towboats with strings of 
barges for freight pass rapidly downstream, or more slowly 
upstream. A view of the gorge from an upland spur shows 
it to be an artery of human life, throbbing with activity, 
while the uplands on either side are the abode of a quiet 
rural population. May this famous view or the broader 
view from the margin of the Hardt across the populous 
Rhine valley further south be enjoyed, without undue delay, 
by many readers of these pages! 



INDEX OF PLACE NAMES 



Abbeville, 136. 

Agincourt, 138. 

Ailette, 116, 122. 

Aire, 96, 97, 99, 100. 

Aisne, 37, 97, 99, 100, 104, 107, 

115, 122. 
Aix-la-Chapelle, 156. 
Alps, 4, 7. 
Alsace, 8, 56, 162. 
Amiens, 10, 129. 
Antwerp, 13, 148, 150, 152. 
Ardennes, 7, 9, 11, 80, 83, 15- 155, 

167. 
Argonne, 51, 98, 99. 
Armorica, 23. 
Arras, 12, 129, 130. 
Artois, 139. 
Aube, 99, 104. 

Bapaume, 130. 

Bar, 96, 97, 100. 

Bar-le-Duc, 86, 96, 98. 

Beauvais, 141. 

Belfort, 8, 9, 48, 66. 

Belgium, 6, 9, 12, 47, 80, 144, 151, 

154. 
Biesme, 99. 

Bight of the Somme, 142. 
Bingen, 165. 
BHes, 164. 

Boulogne-sur-Mer, 7, 139, 143. 
Boulonnais, 139. 
Boundaries, 6. 
Bresse, 24. 
Brie, 31, 34, 110. 
Briey, 77. 
Brittany, 22. 
Bruges, 148. 
Brussels, 156. 
Burgundy, 65. 



Caesar, 7, 66. 

Calais, 7, 139, 143, 148. 

Cambrai, 132. 

Canals, 17, 59, 87, 129, 139, 143, 

148, 162. 
Cape Oris Nez, 7, 133, 139. 

Central Highlands, 4, 5, 23, 24, 25. 

Cevennes, 4. 

Chalk, 125, 133. 

Chalk uplands, 101, 104, 108, 124, 

135. 
Chalons-sur-Marne, 106. 
Champagne, 103- 110-. 
Charleville, 83, 154. 
Chateau-Thierry, 110. 
Chauny, 129. 

Chemin des Dames, 122, 123. 
Chiers, 80, 82, 167. 
Clermont-en- Argonne, 99. 
Chffs, 141. 
Chmate, 13. 
Coal, 25, 145, 156, 164. 
Compiegne, 38, 117, 122. 
C6te d'Or, 24, 65, 66. 
Cotes de Meuse, 85, 88. 
Craonne, 117, 123. 
Crecy, 138. 
Cuesta, 44, 121. 

Dieppe, 141, 143. 
Dinant, 154. 
Donnersberg, 165. 
Douai, 12, 25, 45, 156. 
Dunes, 142, 147-. 
Dunkirk, 6, 145, 148. 
Dun-sur-Meuse, 96. 

Eifel, 151, 165, 166. 
EngHsh Channel, 7, 139, 141. 



171 



172 



INDEX OF PLACE NAMES 



Epernay, 110. 

Epinal, 9, 48, 56, 59, 62, 64. 

Escaut, 12, 128, 145, 156. 

Essen, 156. 

Etretat, 143. 

Fecamp, 143. 
Fere, La, 129, 130, 132. 
F^re Champenoise, 114. 
Flanders, 7, 144, 146-. 
Fontainebleau, 30. 
Forests, 18, 37, 55, 135, 152. 
French language, 4, 5, 170-. 
Frontier, 8, 58, 78. 
Fumay, 154. 

Ghent, 12. 
Glan, 165. 
Government, 14-. 
Grand Couronne, 70, 159. 
Grand Morin, 110. 
Grand Pr^, 100. 
Gravehnes, 148. 

Hague, The, 149. 

Harbors, 18, 142. 

Hardt, 25, 157, 164, 165, 166, 169. 

Hartmannswillerkopf, 55. 

Havre, 9, 138. 

Hochwald, 166. 

Holland, 13, 155, 157. 

Hunsriick, 151, 157, 158, 163, 

165-. 
Huy, le, 156. 

Idarwald, 166. 

Ill, 55. 

Iron ore, 25, 26, 77. 

Karlsruhe, 165. 

Lahn, 165. 
Langres, 66. 

Langres, Plateau of , 24, 65-. 
Language, French, 4, 5, 170. 
ProvenQal, 5, 170. 
Laon, 108, 120, 123, 133, 
Lens, 150- 



Lesse, 152. 

Liege, 11, 12, 152, 156, 157. 

Lille, 12, 145. 

Loire, 10, 25. 

Longwy, 80. 

Lorraine, 9, 24, 26, 47, 64, 157, 166. 

Louvain, 156. 

Luneville, 59. 

Luxembourg, 8, 80, 151, 159, 166. 

Lys, 12, 145. 

Maastricht, 157. 

Madon, 62. 

Mainz, 165. 

Mannheim, 165. 

Maps, 18-. 

Maritime plain, 146, 150. 

Marne, 27, 29, 49, 67, 98, 104, 106, 

110, 111, 114. 
Marne, Battle of the, 34, 36, 114. 
Maubeuge, 9, 12, 48. 
Measures, 20. 
Meaux, 32, 36, 110, 114. 
Metz, 9, 26, 73, 76, 77, 89, 159, 

167. 
Meurthe, 11, 56, 58, 63, 72. 
Meuse, 11, 12, 25, 50, 68, 72, 83, 

85, 87, 92, 151, 153, 154, 156, 

167. 
M^zieres, 9, 12, 48, 83. 
Mirecourt, 63. 
Money, 20. 
Mons, 12, 156. 
Montm^dy, 82. 
Monts Faucilles, 62. 
MoronvilHers, 107. 
Moselle, 11, 25, 56, 63, 68, 72, 76, 

85, 87, 157, 165, 166, 167, 168. 
Mouzon, 82. 
Mt. Blanc, 7. 

Nahe, 165, 166. 
Namur, 12, 154, 156. 
Nancy, 11, 70, 71, 159. 
Nantes, 11. 
Neuf chateau, 68, 85. 
Neufchatel, 138, 141. 
Nied, 162. 



INDEX OF PLACE NAMES 



173 



Nieuport, 148. 
Normandy, 24, 133. 
Noyon, 122, 129, 130, 132. 

Oise, 29- 37, 105, 117, 124, 141. 

Ornain, 85, 98. 

Orne, 73, 77. 

Ostend, 148. 

Ourcq, 29, 37, 114. 

Ourthe, 152, 157. 

Paris, 5. 13, 27, 31, 36, 38-. 
Paris basin, 22, 27, 43, 125. 
Pays de Bray, 138. 140. 
Peronne, 129, 130, 132. 
Petit Morin, 110. 
Picardy, 24, 133. 
Pont-lt-Mousson, 76, 77. 
Prims, 165. 
Proven5al, 5, 170. 
Provence, 4. 
Public Works, 16-. 

Railways, 17, 41, 59, 66, 84, 85, 86, 

92, 136, 138, 154, 162. 
Rainfall, 14. 
Rethel, 107. 
Revin, 154. 

Rheims, 10, 107, 111, 122. 
Rhine, 52, 157, 165, 166, 168, 169. 
Rivers, 9-. 
Roads, 16, 53, 82, 101, 107, 128, 

135, 136, 145, 162. 
Rotterdam, 149. 
Roubaix, 145. 
Rouen, 9, 137, 138. 
Roye, 130, 132. 
Rupt de Mad, 73, 77, 88, 89. 

Saddles of Paris basin, 24. 
Sambre, 12, 151, 155, 156. 
Sanon, 58, 64, 152. 
Sarre, 64, 157, 162, 163, 164, 166, 

168. 
Sarrebruck, 164. 
Sarreguemines, 164. 
Saverne, 163. 
Scarpe, 128, 129, 145. 



Sedan, 83. 

Seille, 58, 64, 76, 159, 162. 

Seine, 9, 25, 27, 30, 87, 133, 135, 

137. 
Semois, 152. 
Sensee, 128. 
Sezanne, 111, 
Sierck 165. 

Slate Mountains, 11, 23, 151, 157. 
Soissons, 115, 122, 123, 130. 
Somme, 10, 25, 124, 129, 130, 135. 
Soonwald, 166. 
Speyer, 165. 
Ste. Menehould, 99. 
Stenay, 82, 96. 
St. Mihiel, 50, 88, 96. 
St. Omer, 145, 148. 
St. Quentin, 129, 132. 
St. Valery-en-Caux, 143. 
Straits of Dover, 7, 143. 
Strasbourg, 8, 55, 162. 
Suippe. 106. 
Sure, 167. 

Tablelands, 115, 121. 

Thiepval, 130. 

Thionville, 76, 80, 167, 168. 

Tides, 137, 142. 

Toul, 9, 48, 64, 72, 85, 89. 

Tourcoing, 145. 

Tournai, 145. 

Trees, 14. 

Treves, 168. 

Troyes, 10, 98, 104. 

Underfit rivers, 87, 97, 100, 129. 
Upland belts, 44-. 

First- 110-. 

Second- 101-. 

Third-, 98-. 

Fourth- 84-. 

Fifth-, 66-. 

Sixth-, 62- 80, 167. 

Seventh- 57- 162, 167. 

Eighth- 56, 58, 59, 162. 

Val de I'Ane, 85, 86. 
Valenciennes, 145, 146. 



174 



INDEX OF PLACE NAMES 



Valois, 36, 114. 

Varennes-en-Argonne, 99. 

Verdun, 9, 48, 88, 89, 92, 93, 96. 

Versailles, 31. 

Vesle, 106. 

Vexin, 37-38, 133. 

V^zouse, 58, 64. 

Villages, 31, 70, 92, 105, 135. 

Vitry-le-FranQois, 98, 104, 114. 

Vosges, 8, 11, 23, 52, 157. 

Vouziers, 100. 



Wateringues, 146. 
Waterloo, 156. 
Weights, 20. 
Woevre, 49, 77, 82, 8 
Worms, 165. 

Yeres, 32. 

Ypres, 145, 148, 150. 

Yser, 13, 148. 

Zeebrugge, 148, 150. 
Zweibriicken, 164. 



PBINTED AT THE HABVABD CNIVEBSITT FBESa, CAUBBIDGE, MASS., V. B. A. 



